APL2MN'5 
^ER^nONS 



John Talbot ^mith 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chap. Copyright No. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



CHAPLAIN'S 




Rev. JOHN TALBOT SMITH, LL.D. 

AUTHOR OF 
" OUR SEMINARIES, AN ESSAY ON CLERICAL TRAINING," 



'A WOMAN OF CULTURE, 
HONOR THE MAYOR," AND 



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SARANAc" :: :: ;i 



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NEW YORK 

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1896 



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WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

0\XX Seminaries. An Essay on Clerical Train- 

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Copyright, 1896 

BY 

JOHN TALBOT SMITH 



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Archbishop of New York. 



^preface. 



The writing of sermons is so far from the line of 
work usually followed by the author of this volume 
that he has ventured unwillingly into the field. The 
failures among sermon-books are notorious. Yery 
few priests seem to have found in them the aid for 
which they looked, and the sentiment is well-nigh 
universal that one need not read sermon-books for 
useful, vivid, fruitful, and instructive models in 
preaching the gospel. It is possible that the failure 
of these books lies rather with the users than with 
the authors. The finest sermons can be no more 
than suggestive to others beside him who first 
preached them. Each man has his own way of ar- 
ranging and presenting a subject, and any other 
arrangement and presentation seem awkward to him. 
Too much, therefore, must not be expected of the 
sermon-writer. If he provides one with a suggestive 
train of thought, which will stir the imagination, 
stimulate the reasoning powers, and please the cor- 
rect taste on a given subject, he has done as much 
as can be expected from even a genius. 

It is the present writer's hope that his sermons 
may achieve in some degree for inexperienced preach- 
ers a success on the above lines. The sermons in 
this volume have been preached more than once to 

iii 



IV PREFACE. 

congregations representing tlie average grade of in- 
telligence, and they have now been specially prepared 
for the young preachers. The writer has avoided 
the two extremes in sermon- writing : the skeleton 
sermon, as not providing enough, and the full ser- 
mon, as providing too much. Moreover, the full 
sermon, printed as it was preached, is always the 
author's ; and even with his consent priests do not 
like to use it as their ov/n : whereas in the present 
instance, the author having simply given the i)lan 
and a brief description of the points, each preacher 
can build up a new sermon which will be really his 
own. He will owe no more to the author than the 
author owes to his models and sources of informa- 
tion. The plan adopted for the arrangement of each 
sermon is the result of careful experimenting in two 
matters : aiding the preacher's memory and keeping 
a congregation interested to the end. The writer is 
of that numerous class who are unable to write a ser- 
mon and commit it to memory, yet have sufficient 
command of words to talk for an hour on a chosen 
subject. Such preachers are apt to be long-winded, 
inaccurate, inelegant in expression, faulty in memory 
so as to forget their points, and often flurried by 
these lapses of memory. Keeping in mind these 
common faults of extempore speakers, and also the 
ever-present need of interesting and pleasing the 
people, the author adopted the plan of dividing a 
sermon into three parts, as one divides a play into 
three acts, and of again dividing each part into two, 
three, or four points. This plan aids the memory. 
When parts and points have been selected, a study 
of them leads the preacher into such an arrange- 



PREFACE. V 

ment of tliem as will increase by natural degrees the 
interest of listeners up to the close of the sermon. 
No careful preacher will neglect this study of in- 
creasing interest and holding it to the end. It is the 
one secret of success in preaching, as it is in the 
writing of plays, novels, essays, orations, — in fact, of 
every species of literary composition. There must 
be an ascending climax, which develops fully only 
at the close, and to which the ascent must be 
gradual. 

It will be noticed that the sermons are not com- 
posed on the usual plan of logical sequence and 
obvious connection among the divisions and points 
of the subject. The aim has been to present the 
picturesque rather than the logical and obvious. 
The average congregation generally is not interested 
in preachers who only reason deeply and well. In 
the sermon on St. John the Baptist, for example, the 
main divisions are concerned with the three periods 
of his life, and are named Hebron, the Jordan, 
Machaerus, as a picturesque way of presenting the 
theme : and certainly the people will remember more 
easily the holy house of Zachary, the wonders done 
at the Jordan, and the tragedy of Herod's prison, 
and all that may be said under these heads, than the 
finest reasoning in the world. In presenting the 
picturesque, however, it is not intended that sermons 
shall be mere word-paintings, or pretty confections, 
more sugar than meat. Little as the average audi- 
ence cares for exact proof of a dogma, one cannot 
go too deeply for them in solid instruction, and in 
the explanation of profound principles; provided 
that one explains these principles simply and briefly, 



VI PREFACE. 

and passes at once to ricli illustrations of them, 
taken from the common life of the time. Thus, in 
the sermon on the Nativity, the least intelligent 
Catholic audience will thoroughly appreciate the 
application to ordinary human conditions of the 
three laws of the religious state, poverty, obedience, 
and chastity. The writer hopes that this volume 
may be of use to many of his younger brethren. He 
has gone out of his usual path simply to be of service 
to them in that divine office of preaching, which, 
after the administration of the sacraments, is the 
highest honor of the Christian priesthood. 
New Yokk, October 31. 



ConicntB. 



PAQB 

Preface, , . iii 

The Advent Season, 1 

Go forth to meet him and say : Tell us if Thou art the 
One about to reign over Israel. — Brev. 

The Precursor, 9 

And he shall go before Him in the spirit and the power 
of Elias : that he may turn the hearts of the fathers 
unto the children, and the incredulous to the wisdom 
of the just, to prepare unto the Lord a perfect people. 
—Luke i. 17. 

The Scribes and the Pharisees, 18 

Ye offspring of vipers, who hath shewed you to flee 
from the wrath to come ? — Luke iii. 7. 

Responsibilities of Christians, .... 27 

The night is past and the day is at hand ; let us, there- 
fore, cast off the works of darkness and put on the 
armor of light.— Rom. xiii. 12. 

The Immaculate Conception, 36 

Behold from henceforth all nations shall call me 
blessed. — Luke i. 48. 

Christmas Day, 44 

For this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the 
Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign 

■ unto you : Tou shall find the infant wrapped in 
swaddling-clothes, and laid in a manger. — Luke ii. 
11, 12. 

vii 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

PAOS 

New Year's Day, . . . . . . . .53 

Wlien a man hath done then shall he begin. — Ecclus. 
xviii. 6. 

The Epiphany, 61 

He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. 
—John 1. 11. 

St. Patrick, 69 

Behold a great priest, who in his days was pleasing to 
God, and was found just, and in the time of wrath 
was made a reconciliation. — Brev. 

St. Joseph, 77 

A holy death makes others divine after death, and glory 
embraces those who have earned the palm : but thou, 
more blessed in thy wonderful destiny, while yet a 
mortal, equalled the celestials in the full enjoyment 
of God. — Breviary hymn. 

The Lenten Season, . . . . . . .86 

What wilt thou that I do to thee ? And he said, Lord, 
that I may see. — Luke xvii. 41. 

Death, 95 

It is appointed unto men once to die. — Heb. ix. 27. 
By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin 
death. — Rom. v. 13. 

The Final Account, 104 

But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall 
speak, they shall render an account for it in the day 
of judgment. — Matt, xii. 36. 

Heaven, 112 

But as it is written : the eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man, what 
things God hath prepared for them that love Him. — 
1 Cor. ii. 9. 



CONTENTS. IX 



Everlasting Failure, 121 

Then shall He say to the wicked : depart from Me, ye 
accursed, into everlasting fire. — Matt. xxv. 46. 

The Passion of Christ, 129 

And Jesus again crying with a loud voice yielded up 
His Spirit. — Matt, xxvii. 59. 

Faith, 137 

Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed. 
— John XX. 29. 

I have kept the faith.— 2 Tim. iv. 7. 

But the just shall live in his faith. — Hab. xi. 4. 

The Knowledge and Love of Jesus Christ, . . 146 

Furthermore I count all things to be but loss, for the 
excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord : for 
whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count 
them but as dung, that I may gain Christ. — Phil. 
iii. 8. 

The Sacraments, 155 

Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her 
out seven pillars. — Prov. ix. 1. 

I saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the 
seven golden candlesticks, one like the Son of Man, 
clothed with, a garment down to the feet, and girt 
about the paps with a golden girdle. — Apoc. i. 12, 13. 

Sin, . 164 

Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin : 
and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. — 
James i. 15. 

For the wages of sin is death : but the gift of God is 
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Rom. vi. 
23. 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Penance, ... 173 

Unless you do penance you shall all likewise perish. — 
Luke xiii. 3. 

Holy Thursday, 181 

And whilst they were eating, Jesus took bread : and 
blessing broke, and gave to them, and said : Take ye 
and eat, This is My Body.— Mark xiv. 22. 

What is Wrong with the Men, 189 

Now there was much grass in the place : the men there- 
fore sat down in number about five thousand.— John 
vi. 10. 

But while the men were sleeping his enemy came, sowed 
cockle amid the wheat, and went his way. — Matt, 
xiii. 25. 

The Christian Family, 197 

And He went down with them and came to Nazareth : 
and He was subject to them. And His mother kept 
all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in 
wisdom and age, and grace with God and men. Luke 
ii. 51, 52. 

Prayer, ... ..... 205 

And He spoke a parable to them, that men ought al- 
ways to pray, and not to faint. — Luke xviii. 1. 

Priestcraft, . . 213 

The Lord hath sworn and He will not repent : thou art 
a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech. 
— Psalm cix. 

The Four Last Things, 222 

In all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt 
never sin. — Ecclus. vii. 40. 



CONTENTS. XI 

PAGE 

The Holy Name of Jesus, ...... 230 

Tliou slialt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his 
people from their sins.— Matt. i. 21. 

The Married State, 238 

A man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave 
to his wife : and they shall be two in one flesh. — Gen. 
ii. 24. 

This is a great sacrament, but I speak in Christ and in 
the Church.— Ephes. v. 32. 

The Child, 246 

Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid 
them not : for of such is the kingdom of God.— Mark 
X. 14. 

Easter Sunday, . . .... 254 

He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. 
— 1 Cor. XV. 4. 

Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more ; 
death shall no more have dominion over Him. — Eom. 
vi. 9. 

The Ascension of the King*, ...... 262 

And when He had said these things, whilst they looked 
on. He was raised up, and a cloud received Him out 
of their sight.— Acts i. 9. 

The Feast of Pentecost, 270 

But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, Whom the Father 
will send in My name. He will teach you all things, 
and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall 
have said to you. — John xvi. 26. 

The Blessed Trinity, 278 

Going, therefore, teach ye all nations : baptizing them 
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost.— Matt, xxviii. 19. 



Xll CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

For there are three who give testimony in heaven : the 
Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these 
three are one. — 1 John v. 7. 

Corpus Christi, . 286 

He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath 
everlasting life : and I will raise him up in the last 
day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is 
drink indeed. — John vi. 55, 56. 

The Assumption, 294 

A great sign appeared in heaven : a Woman clothed with 
the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head 
a crown of twelve stars. — Apoc. xii. 1. 

The Angels, 303 

Thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten 
thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him. 
—Dan. vii. 10. 

It came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by 
the angels into Abraham's bosom. — Luke xvi. 22. 

The Feast of All Saints, 311 

After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no 
man could number, of all nations, and peoples, and 
kindreds, and tongues, stood before the throne and 
before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms 
in their hands.— Apoc. vii. 9. 

The Souls in Purgatory, . . ... 318 

Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord : Lord, 
hear my voice. — Ps. cxxix. 

It is, therefore, a holy and wholesome thought to pray 
for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins. 
—1 Mac. xii. 46. 



CONTENTS. Xni 



PAGE 



The Saints, 326 

To him that shall overcome I shall give to sit with Me 
in my throne : as I also have overcome, and am sat 
down with My Father in his throne. — Apoc. iii. 21. 

They are equal to the angels, and are the children of 
God, being the children of the resurrection. — Luke 
XX. 36. 

Index of Subjects, 389 

Index for Sundays of the year, 389 

Index for Special Courses, 340 



C^e ^bf?ent ^edBon. 



Oo forth to iiuet Him and say : Tell us if TJwu art the One about 
to reign over Israel. — Brev. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The Church begins her New Year in Advent without festivities. 

2. Her majestic voice carries to all men the message of the coming King. 

3. She alone announces with power the virginal birth of Jesus. 

4. The grandeur of both message and messenger forces men to listen with 

profound emotion. 

5. Many deny importance to either message or messenger, and their 

arguments are answered. 

6. Men will hear the truth, and cannot refuse it either open or secret 

homage. 

7. The Church exhausts her energies in presenting to men at particular 

times the great truths of religion. 

8. By emphasizing in the Advent season the first coming of the Son of 

God, she hopes to prepare men for His second and more solemn coming. 

9. Therefore her glorious voice wakes all men from the sleep of sin and 

indifference to watch in repentance and hope at the crib of Bethlehem. 

I. The Call to the People. 

1. As the CYwil year begins with the month of 
January, so the Church year begins with the season 
of Advent. There is perhaps more of accident than 
of design in the selection of one month over another 
for the first place in the calendar ; whereas the idea of 
spiritual preparation for the Nativitj^ of Christ directs 
the Church in fixing the opening day for the eccle- 
siastical year. Her new year's day is strangely lack- 
ing in the appearances of a festival. The churches 
are draped in the penitential color, and the Gloria is 
dropped from the hymns of praise ; the liturgy of the 
time is a mingled cry of joy and sorrow; and the 

■ 1 . ~ ■ 



2 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

lessons of the daily office describe the joyous coming 
of a great leader together with the fearful sufferings 
of a man, despised and rejected, who " came unto his 
own, and his own received him not." So used are we 
to the celebration of this Advent season, that its beau- 
tiful significance escapes our feeble vision. "What we 
are doing to-day in honor of Christ's coming, the 
millions of Catholics scattered over the globe are 
doing in precisely the same way, and with the same 
spirit. What a tremendous spectacle it would be to 
the eye which could take in the scene, as does the 
mind, at one glance; these millions of people and 
leaders crying out one to another and to the world, 
"Brethren, it is now the hour for us to rise from 
sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we 
first believed. " — Kom. xiii. 

2. This is the cry of the great Church of Christ, 
and her colors are penitential, because with her great 
graces are met by preparatory penances; heaven is 
the reward of a life of restraint and obedience ; the 
crown is preceded by sickness, death, judgment, pur- 
gatory; the honor of numbering God among this 
mortal race is acknowledged in garments of penance, 
with tears of joy and sorrow. She begins her year in 
penance that she may end it in glory. Thus clad she 
stands before the nations, both the heedful and the 
indifferent, and calls them to the road of preparation, 
the way of the kings to Bethlehem. AVhat an inspir- 
ation to the dullest to behold her majestic figure 
standing before the world of to-day, and crying out 
her invitation and her warning, as did the prophets 
to the ancient world, as did the Angel to Mary and 
Joseph and the Shepherds, as did John the Baptist 



THE ADVENT SEASON. 3 

to the Scribes and Pharisees. Her glorious voice 
touches the remotest isles, searches the depths of the 
seas, reaches into the abysses of human hearts; it 
breaks across the hum of unprincipled trade, drowns 
the clamors of earthly passions, silences the speech 
of unbelief a moment, so that all mankind hears and 
acknowledges the message of the herald : Hasten to 
adore the coming King. 

3. Alas, that she should stand so utterlj^ alone at 
this hour, that among the descendants of Christians 
she must find millions who listen with indifference 
and ignorance, instead of love. " The ox hath known 
his owner, and the ass his master's stall; but Israel 
hath not known me, and my people hath not under- 
stood." — Isa. i. 3. Alone she announces that a God 
is about to honor the race by the assumption of mor- 
tality, which then becomes Di^dne. The sects have 
no Advent, no preparation worthy of the name. A 
few struggle to imitate her methods, but the millions 
born in their fold look on without care, or take no 
part. There is neither beginning nor end to the sect 
year, for it does not exist. They teach the Christ, 
but are not sure of His miraculous birth, of His 
divinity, of His promised kingdom, of His resurrec- 
tion, nay, of His sanity. They spend an Advent in 
discussing these doubts. The great Church alone 
cries out with a voice as certain as the prophet's 
when he spoke to Achaz: "Behold, a Virgin shall 
conceive, and bear a Son, and His name shall be 
called Emmanuel." — Isa. vii. 



THE chaplain's SERMONS. 



n. The Listening World. 

1. The world listens to this cry with respect, or 
scorn, or curiosity. It must listen. Thousands of 
priests to-day announce from the altars the name and 
character of the coming King. Two hundred millions 
of souls shout back their joy at the tidings. Both 
priests and people gather in prayer and penance to 
make ready for the Christmas festival, and the indif- 
ferent millions cannot but ask the meaning of all this 
clamor of petition and preparation. The interested 
aesthetic is charmed with the ritual of these days, 
with the reading of the prophecies of Isaias, with the 
beauty of the antiphons in the holy offices. The 
atheist bemoans the vitality of the Christian " super- 
stition." The indifferent Catholic is touched at this 
reminder of his own neglect, and the ignorant but 
innocent pagan is drawn by a mysterious sympathy 
toward the truth so beautifully announced. Thus 
each year by example and teaching the world is made 
aware of the God who rules the world ; and, the mes- 
sage delivered, each man must justify to himself the 
manner in which he receives it. Men will not be able 
to say at judgment that the truth was not announced 
to them. 

2. Many deny that it is the truth, and refuse to 
accept the splendor of the announcement as a witness 
to the Divinity of Christ or of Christianity. They 
point out the millions that profess Buddhism, and 
ask if a similar cry or call to worship its divinities 
should be the more heeded because so many believe in 
them. They forget that it is not the numbers which 



THE ADVENT SEASON. 5 

follow Christ that make Him the Son of God ; nor is 
it the success of the Christian idea which makes it 
the truth. Its vitality is from God, from truth itself. 
What a terror shook the court of Herod when the 
Kings of the East in their innocence came asking for 
the King of the Jews ! What joy filled the hearts of 
the weary people, sad with waiting and expectation. 
It was not numbers that drew from Simeon his pro- 
phetic utterances in the temple, frightening once 
more the corrupt court, but a helpless child of humble 
parents. When John scorned the Pharisees and an- 
nounced the Christ, when Jesus called Himself the 
Son of God, drove the vile from the temple with 
lashing, and openly rebuked both Herod and the 
Pharisees, there were no numbers to impress men. 
Neither was there a multitude in Eome when the em- 
perors began their struggle with the Popes of the 
catacombs, and learned that in their dominion was a 
power which did not depend on the strength of this 
world. Finally there were no numbers in this very 
country of ours, when the first Catholic immigrants 
began to celebrate the neglected Christmas festival. 
It was both scorned and neglected in those days, 
though to-day most popular of the feasts of the year. 
3. Men must listen to the truth, because they were 
made to know and love it, almost as soon as presented 
to them. It was truth which drew the Kings, fright- 
ened Herod and the Pharisees, made the Popes 
powerful, and rescued the feast of Christmas from 
oblivion in this country. To-day, as when first the 
Prophets cried out to the world, as when Christ 
preached, and afterward the Apostles, men hear the 
same message: the Son of God is come into this 



6 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

world to save mankind. Then follow all the truths 
dependent on this message : the Blessed Trinity and 
the eternal life of heaven; the conditions of salva- 
tion, and the conditions of damnation; the fact and 
the sense or conviction of sin ; its judgment ; repent- 
ance here, and restoration in the life to come ; and the 
responsibilities which spring from these. These 
things are tremendous truths or still more tremendous 
falsehoods. They must be accepted or destroyed. 
They are the basis of the teaching of Christ, and have 
brought consolation and strength and happiness to 
hundreds of millions. Once more in this season of 
Advent the Church announces them to men. 

ni. The Last Coming. 

1. Not alone in her churches, pulpits, offices does 
the Church make the announcement of the King's 
coming and the need of preparation; but also by that 
impulse which, through the Holy Spirit, she gives to 
all the faithful. Convinced of this truth, each 
Catholic passes the message to his neighbor, his 
friend, his acquaintance, and the whole world 
trembles with joy or with uneasiness. The Protes- 
tant Christian wonders at the persistency which 
makes of this Advent an annual affair, an universal 
festival involving the whole world, and immense 
activity. Would not a mere notice from the pulpit be 
sufficient when the anniversary came around, or a 
paragraph in the journal ? Man is not constituted to 
be deeply impressing by such routine methods. 
Some of his impressions must be received daily and 
even hourly, and at the least one year's round must 



THE ADVENT SEASON. 7 

bring him face to face with important anniversaries. 
Nature has so ordained it. The processes of vegeta- 
tion repeat themselves in the annual round of the 
seasons ; at fixed times the constellations begin anew 
their wondrous course through space ; and so in the 
mental, social, and spiritual orders man is necessi- 
tated to renew his afiirmation for the things that are. 
Each year a new generation arises and must be taught 
the same truths, vdih. ever-freshening emphasis and 
illustration; for they, no less than their begetters, 
have souls to save. 

2. Still, queries the economist, what need of such 
a display of earnestness, such a waste of force? The 
Church seems to exhaust mankind in the effort to 
prepare them for a mere anniversary. No : it is not 
only the mere anniversary for which the Church pre- 
pares. The first coming of Christ is a thing of the 
past; the second coming of the Son of God is the 
motive for so great persistency and earnestness. The 
crib will one day yield to the throne of judgment, 
and before this Child, now helpless and free to the 
love or hate or indifference of men, the nations of 
time must pass for the last sentence. What a con- 
trast, these two comings of Christ! In Bethlehem, 
and on the anniversaries, a little Child ready to re- 
ceive any that believe in Him, or that long for faith 
and certainty; helpless before ill-treatment, eager 
only to bestow the gift of life. On the throne a just 
Judge, v/ho must render to every man according to 
his works, who comes in the clouds of heaven with 
exceeding power and majesty, and who will divide all 
men into two multitudes, one for the life of heaven 
and the other for the life of hell. Can the sum of 



8 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

human earnestness and persistency be too great to 
waste upon the training of men for the supreme 
moment of destiny? 

3. Therefore, awake, mankind, and set out to find 
the King with earnest hearts and loving intentions. 
The sleep which has dulled you into indifference to 
the things of eternal life is often too profound for the 
power of God to disturb, and thousands have waked 
from it only at the bar of judgment. They now have 
an eternity in which to consider its fatal strength. 
What an enchanter's sleep money-getting, pleasures 
of sense, love of ease, petted passions, cast upon the 
soul. In vain the priest, the friend, the scourges of 
God shout in the sleeper's ear, and rain blows on the 
slumberer! By the million men deliver themselves 
with joy and speed to the sleep of sin, and would 
have it so deep that no power could waken them 
even to immortality. Let the prophet, the angel, the 
ruler, the church cease for one year to cry out to men, 
and this fatal sleep will have claimed other millions. 
Therefore for twenty centuries has the church stood 
in the market-place, and announced the King ; alone, 
ridiculed, and persecuted; but with a voice so per- 
suasive and piercing that only the wilfully deaf fail 
to hear. And to-day salvation is much nearer to the 
universal world than at any time since the Christ. 



€^t (jprecutBor. 



Afid he sJiall go before Him ia the spirit and tlie 'power of Elias; 
that he may turn the hearts of the fatfters unto the children, and 
the incredulous to the wisdom of the just, to prepare unto the Lord 
a perfect people. — Luke i. 17. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The Precursor held the high office of preparing the Jews for the imme- 

diate coming of the Christ. 

2. The splendid circumstances attending his birth. 

3. His companionship with Jesus in boyhood. 

4. His weird and solemn appearance preaching on the banks of the Jordan. 

5. The substance of his powerful teachings. 

6. His meeting with Christ marks the turning-point of his career, 

7. The earthly reward of his labors is the splendid testimony of Christ. 

8. The world rewards his devotion by imprisonment and death. 

9. As John spoke of Christ to the world in his day, so in our day the 

Church preaches the Messiah to all men. 



I. Hebkon. 

1. God prepared the old world for the coming of 
His Son by the prophets, the actors in the opening 
scenes of the Saviour's life by the Angel Gabriel, as 
he prepares each year the Christian world by the 
solemn celebrations of the Church. The day in 
which Christ lived was enlightened as to the char- 
acter of Christ by the power and genius of John the 
Baptist. He burst upon the Jewish nation like a 
meteor, and the whole race went out to meet him. 
The loftiness and sweetness of his wonderful nature 
are somewhat obscured for us by his closeness to the 
light of the world, Christ Himself ; just as the won- 

9 



10 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

derful holiness of Mary and Joseph fade before the 
splendor of the Divinity. These exalted souls cer- 
tainly rejoiced in their obscurity, which for them 
meant light beyond what earthly fame could ever give 
them. Yet with all their effacement it is through 
them our human wits get some understanding of the 
glorious nature of Jesus ; and the more we dwell upon 
their careers and endowments the more humbly and 
lovingly do we adore the Divine Man. The resem- 
blance in many points of the Saviour and His Pre- 
cursor stirs the heart to deep emotion. 

2. His entrance into the world is the noblest known 
to man, and its sublime circumstances as related by 
St. Luke touch even the dry hearts of pagans. The 
Angel announced him in the very temple of God to 
the father serving incense at the altar in terms which 
suit only the princes of men, the leaders whom genius 
and lofty character have endowed with the purple; 
the Holy Family sanctified him in his mother's 
womb, in the great mystery of the Visitation; at that 
moment the Precursor recognized His Master, and in 
the recognition was freed from the touch of original 
sin; and the two mothers, Mary and Elizabeth, lifted 
up with the enthusiasm of the Holy Spirit, uttered 
the prayers and the canticle which have echoed 
through the world for so manj centuries. The 
Angel's salute to Mary was completed by Elizabeth, 
and the beautiful Magnificat leaped from the heart 
and lips of the Mother of Jesus. The Baptist was 
welcomed into the world by the Holy Family, and 
received his holy name in their presence; and his 
father sang to God that other canticle, the Benedictus, 
whose beauty has given it enduring life in the Church. 



THE PRECURSOR. 11 

No poet of loftiest genius could have imagined and 
described a scene more sublime than the entrance of 
John into the world. 

3. Although we have no knowledge of the youth 
of John other than the statement of his life in the 
desert, all tradition assures us that the families of 
Joseph and Zachary enjoyed intimacy for many years 
before death had removed the parents of John, and 
the Spirit had sent him into solitude to prepare for 
his mission. Therefore, we see in so many paintings 
the little Precursor as the companion and playfellow 
of Christ. We have only to look at the holy children 
around us, the children whom God has specially 
marked for His own, and set in such homes as these 
once ruled by Joseph and Zachary, by Mary and 
Elizabeth, to get an understanding of what that com- 
radeship must have been. The angels rejoiced in it. 
It was human no less than divine. No sorrows 
peculiar to this world were spared its immortal actors. 
Exile and the dread of a King's jealousy kept Joseph 
in obscure Galilee and away from his own; then 
death called the priest of Hebron and his wife to their 
rest ; and finally the desert beckoned to John and re- 
ceived him into its solitude. It requires no fancy to 
see the smiles which lit the faces of the two boys at 
each meeting, and the tears which graced each parting ; 
to hear the comforting words of Jesus whispered into 
the ear of John over the graves of his beloved parents ; 
and, when the final parting came, and the holy boy 
withdrew from the society of men, when the family of 
Hebron was no more on this earth, and the tears of 
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph mingled with John's at the 
loss of so much loveliness, to hear the mingled bless- 



12 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

ings of Son and Mother and Patriarch showered 
upon the loveliest boy that the earth ever nourished 
after the Boy of Galilee. They might have remained 
together, but their first thought and desire was the 
will of God. 

II. The Joedan. 

1. They met again only when the Holy Ghost had 
ended the period of preparation for John, who sud- 
denly appeared in the desert near Jerusalem to an- 
nounce the Messiah and to " prepare a perfect people 
to the Lord. " As innocent and holy as when he came 
from the womb of his mother, illumined by that long 
and lonely life in the desert with God, filled with one 
desire to render his people fit for the Messiah, he 
stood up before the world of that time and called it 
to penance. He was clad in skins, he ate no meat 
and drank no wine, and his words so touched the 
hearts of those who heard them that the report spread 
through all the country of a new prophet sent by God 
to His people. The Jews had been long without a 
prophet, but so deeply had they longed for one, and 
particularly^ for the last and greatest, the Messiah, 
that the marks of the true prophet were familiar to 
the commonest. John went not near the city, but did 
his work in the wilderness; and the sincere, the 
curious, the hopeful went out to meet him, hoping in 
those sad times for a message that meant help from 
heaven for a very sick world. They were more than 
satisfied, for this strange, weird, awful character who 
preached the necessity of penance, announced himself 
as the herald of One still greater than himself, whose 
coming would bring eternal joy to the world. 



THE PRECURSOR. 13 

2. He cried but penance to listeners for whom 
penance was a lost art ; and lie put his finger on the 
weak spot of Judaism at that time, when he warned 
the Pharisees and Sadducees that their descent from 
Abraham was not enough to save them from the 
wrath to come. These aristocrats promptly de- 
nounced him, but the multitude did not desert him 
in consequence; they still crowded to the Jordan, 
wept for their sins, and were baptized in the river as 
a sign of their regenerated hearts. They asked re- 
peatedly what they were to do. To some the Pre- 
cursor answered, "He that hath two coats, let him 
give to him that hath none ; and he that hath meat let 
him do in like manner." To the tax-collectors, he 
said : " Do nothing more than that which is appointed 
you;" to soldiers: "Do violence to no man, neither 
calumniate any man, and be content with your pay." 
And to all he declared that he was not Elias, nor the 
Messiah, nor anything more than a mere voice sent 
by God to prepare men for the One who was to 
baptize men with the Holy Ghost and with fire. The 
life of the desert under the influence of the Holy 
Spirit had emancipated John from the slavery to 
tradition and formalism in which lived the Scribes 
and the Pharisees ; he saw the condition of society 
with the clear eyes of the prophet and hermit; and, 
therefore, he did not hesitate to denounce the power- 
ful and hard-hearted rulers of the time in vigorous 
language, calling the Pharisees a set of vipers, and 
publicly reproaching Herod for his crimes. To them 
also he announced a Messiah, whose axe was at the 
root ; but while for the repentant His coming was to 
bring joy and hope, for such as these the Christ 
would have only unquenchable fire. 



14 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

3. His wonderful career may be said to have cul- 
minated with the baptism of Christ. The leaders of 
the people had rejected him, and the court was 
scheming to put him out of the way without starting 
a riot ; from one end of the land to the other had 
gone the report of his character and his teaching; 
and while men were talking in wonder and joy of the 
Great Being foretold by him as soon to come to man's 
relief, Jesus appeared on the Jordan and presented 
Himself like a sinner for baptism. We can well 
pause in astonishment at this mystery ; we can sym- 
pathize with the Precursor as he said : " I ought to 
be baptized by Thee, and comest Thou to me?" and 
we can understand in a measure the comfort of the 
Saviour's reply : " Suffer it to be so now, for so it be- 
cometh us to fulfil all justice. Then he suffered 
Him." It was the Master's testimony to the work of 
His servant; the Holy Ghost confirmed that testi- 
mony by manifesting Himself to the Precursor as He 
descended on Jesus in the form of a dove ; and the 
Father's voice sounded in the ears of John in ac- 
knowledgment of His beloved Son. The Baptist knew 
that his work was ended, that the voice which had 
stirred all Judea was to sound no more the glories of 
the Messiah, that his light was eclipsed ; and we feel 
the pathos of his words to his disciples : " He must 
increase, but I must decrease." For a little while he 
preached to the multitudes ; then the prison of Herod 
closed upon him forever. 



THE PRECURSOR. 15 



III. Machaerus. 

1. The reward of his labors for the world was a 
prison, in which the hatred of a harlot kept him 
locked, with the fourth part of a king as his jailer. 
As his life had been pure, disinterested, severe, his 
mind lofty, his soul seraphic, so his persecutors, his 
enemies, his prison were among the meanest on the 
earth. What place they have kept in history is due 
to their mighty victim ; but it is a mean and infamous 
place, in which their crime and their stupidity are 
pilloried together. Though John made glorious the 
fortress in whose dungeons his life ended, none the 
less bitter were those last days for him. We can see 
him in his lonely cell, overcome, as man cannot help 
but be, with sweet memories of the past and the ter- 
rors of the future. The days of his childhood, the 
sweet home at Hebron, the glorious freedom of the 
desert, the days of his mission, rise before him side 
by side with the meanness of Herod, the hatred of 
Herodias, the hardships of the prison, the momentary 
expectation of a violent death. Angels may have com- 
forted him, have strengthened him; but the human 
heart still suffers from its own weaknesses, and the 
son of Zachary and Elizabeth suffered, as his Master 
suffered, all the natural pains of his situation. One 
voice of comfort broke into the gloom and sadness of 
the prison. " What went you out into the desert to 
see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went 
you out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? 
Behold, they that are clothed in soft garments are in 
the houses of kings. But what went you out to see? 



16 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

A prophet? Yea, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 
For this is he, of whom it is written : Behold I send 
my Angel before thy face, who shall prepare thy way 
before thee. Amen I say to you, among them that 
are born of women there hath not arisen a greater 
than John the Baptist." — Matt. xxi. 

2. Yet a shameless dancer cut short his life, and 
the head of the Precursor was struck off at the bid- 
ding of Herod. So the beast Nero treated St. Paul, 
and a later beast, Henry YIII., pleased himself with 
the heads of More and Fisher. The crowned mean- 
ness and vileness of this world often fattens on the 
blood of the really great. The Precursor died as his 
Master was to die, a criminal, having denounced the 
sins of the rulers ; after a life too brief for so much 
loveliness of heart and power of soul ; loved indeed by 
the people, but scorned by the rulers, who declared 
him possessed of the devil. In all things he was 
truly the Precursor of Christ, and to study his spirit, 
the externals of his character, and his career, is to get 
a deeper glimpse into the soul of Jesus. 

3. It is the fashion with many to look upon the age 
in which he lived as peculiarly blessed because of his 
presence; and the multitudes v/ho followed him as 
very fortunate in having so great an impulse to good, 
so great an encouragement to keep in the way of 
virtue. It is also a fashion to wonder at the folly and 
blindness of the Jewish leaders, who could listen and 
watch at his feet, and return home with the belief that 
the Precursor possessed a devil. We are all ready to 
denounce the malice and wickedness which handed 
him over to a painful imprisonment and an ignoble, 
death. Yet in what are our days different from . the 



THE PRECURSOR. 17 

days of the Baptist? Where the world had only one 
Judea we have a Judea in every church that honors 
the land; where the world had only one John the 
Baptist to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord 
we have the splendid universal Church, making the 
world ring with her joyous announcement of the King ; 
and while at that time both the Precursor and his 
Master were confined to a small corner of the world, 
to-day the Son of God is on every altar, and Jesus finds 
His Precursor in every faithful priest, in every devout 
Christian. We wonder at the folly of the Pharisees ! 
Look around ! See the multitude pursuing pleasure, 
and the means of pleasure, with the gospel trumpeted 
in their ears as it never was in the days of the 
Baptist ; thousands of leaders, millions of Christians, 
the telegraph and the press, the churches, systems of 
charity, a thousand important facts clamoring in the 
public places of the life to come, of the days of Ad- 
vent, of the King, of sin and its judgment. Yet the 
multitude turns as did the Jewish leaders to curse the 
herald of such tidings. It prefers to worship the 
devil; where it can persecute it does not hesitate to 
use the rack, the dungeon, and the scaffold. It is the 
same fool-world as in the days of St. John ; and since 
it cannot get at the Christ or the Precursor, it turns 
like a tiger on their followers to rend them. 



C^e ^criBec (Xnb f^e (p^amuB. 



Ye offspring of vipers, who hath sTcewed you to flee from the wrath to 
come. — Luke in. 7. 

OUTLINE. 

1. God prepared the Jews with great care for the coraing of His Son. 

2. Yet the Jewish leaders, the Scribes and the Pharisees, though intelli- 

gent, wealthy, and witnesses of many marvels, 

3. Rejected and slew both the Precursor and Our Lord, 

4. Chiefly because they allowed their deep-rooted prejudices and habits 

of sin to blind their judgment. 

5. Their prejudices rejected a carpenter as the Messiah. 

6. Habits of sin led them into the guilt of Deicide. 

7. Their punishment was the destruction of their order and their city. 

8. They have successors at the present time in all poor Catholics. 



I. The Beood of Yipers. 

1. The ingratitude which man so often displays 
toward God as well as toward his fellows ne^er was 
better illustrated than in the history of the powerful 
classes known as the Scribes and the Pharisees. God 
the Father prepared the Jews with wonderful care for 
the coming of that ruler, whose kingdom was to be 
the hearts of men, and through whom the chosen 
people were to rule the world. The Prophets an- 
nounced the Messiah, the Angel Gabriel carried 
various messages to Zachary, to the Blessed Mother, 
to St. Joseph, and to the shepherds, which prepared 
them for the Saviour's coming, and the Kings aroused 
Jerusalem to the immediate fulfilment of the long- 
studied prophecies; while Jesus, by His wonderful 

18 



THE SCRIBES AND THE PHARISEES. 19 

miracles, and Jolin the Baptist, by his express declar- 
ations, made clear to the highest and lowest of the 
Jews that the Messiah had really come among men. 
Never in the history of the world was a nation or its 
leaders more carefully and precisely prepared for 
its particular destiny than the Jewish nation for its 
mission of enlightenment to the world. 

2. Yet observe the fearful malice which actuated 
the leaders of the Jewish nation in all their dealings 
with the Saviour. Bear in mind that the Scribes and 
the Pharisees were the wealthy, educated, intelligent, 
and powerful classes of Judea; all power was prac- 
tically in their hands ; and while the common people 
might through ignorance mistake an impostor for the 
Messiah, the intelligence and training of the Scribes 
and the Pharisees were of so high an order, that mis- 
takes of that kind, failure to recognize the Messiah 
as soon as He presented His claims, should have been 
next to impossible. As a matter of fact when the 
Kings from the East made inquiry as to the new- 
born King of the Jews, these well-trained and expert 
leaders promptly named His birthplace, and the royal 
house from which He was to spring. When John the 
Baptist came out of the desert and began his work of 
preparation for his Master, these same Scribes and 
Pharisees sent delegates to interview him, that they 
might know if he were the Messiah, or a prophet, or 
a messenger of God ; so alert were they for the com- 
ing of that leader who was to bring them out of bond- 
age and give them a place once more among the 
nations. When Christ began His wonderful career, 
their agents and spies missed no possible opportunity 
of watching Him. Their best men argued with 



20 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

Him, their princes sought to entertain Him. His 
greatest miracles were witnessed by many of them, 
and the first converts came from their ranks. They 
heard the Saviour's claims to the position of Son of 
God, as the Messiah, they saw His raising of Lazarus 
from the dead, they felt the charm and power of His 
magnificent teachings, they felt bitterly His great in- 
fluence over the people, an influence never attained 
by them. The more they sought to discover the 
secret of His powers the more were they convinced 
that this wonderful Being came from God. 

3. But alas ! to what horrors did not their evil dis- 
positions lead them in spite of their careful training, 
their intelligence, the open declarations of the Baptist 
and the miracles of Jesus, their own convictions and 
tremblings, the reports of their numerous spies. 
They came to the conclusion that John was possessed 
of the devil, that his testimony was diabolical, his 
doctrines vain, and himself an impostor. They had 
no defence for him, no criticism of Herod, when first 
the prison and then the grave closed upon the Pre- 
cursor. Rather they rejoiced that he had been made 
away with in his youth, before he had had time to 
injure them, whom he had called to their very faces 
a brood of vipers. They set on foot plans for the 
murder of the Saviour, as a still more dangerous man 
among the people. His miracles did not convince, 
but only maddened them. His greatness irritated 
them, because the assassin might not strike at Him 
in the daylight or in the public place. That beauti- 
ful life had to be sought in the darkness, or destroyed 
through the Roman tribunals. They gnashed their 
teeth at Him, and cursed the fortunates whose phys- 



THE SCRIBES AND THE PHARISEES. 21 

ical woes had been healed by the word or the touch 
of the Son of God. They left no stone unturned to 
compass His final destruction. "^Mien we compare 
the lavish generosity of God the Father in His treat- 
ment of the Jews with the malice of the leaders in the 
time of Christ, it is easy to understand the exceeding 
patience of God with weak and malicious mankind. 

II. Theie Sins. 

1. "Why should they have been so blind, so mali- 
cious, so murderous? What was the secret of a 
stupidity so marvellous that even the pagan world 
wonders at it to-day ? Even had they not accepted 
Christ as the Messiah, He might have been granted 
the honors and privileges of a great teacher, a genius 
whose doctrines could not but bring good to mankind ; 
or He might have been pleasantly banished to remote 
countries, Avith orders ,to be seen no more in Judea. 
The Scribes and Pharisees might at least have spared 
their name the guilt of innocent blood. But this 
prudence was not within their power. Deep-rooted 
prejudices and long enjoyment of the first places in 
the state made decency impossible. For generations 
they had looked for this leader, the Messiah, and had 
pictured Him as coming like a prince of this world to 
take possession of His own. Statesmen were to stand 
at His mother's bedside to welcome Him into exist- 
ence; a nation was to wait at His palace gates to 
greet Him; He was to grow up under the care of 
kings, and to go forth in His maturity a general of 
renown, a sage, a politician, suiTounded by the 
Scribes and Pharisees, and other leading classes in 



22 THE CHAPLAIN S SERMONS. 

the state, who were to conquer the world under His 
banner, and to possess all the good things of spoiled 
kingdoms. And they were now asked to give up this 
brilliant dream for the reality of a carpenter of 
Nazareth, a mere teacher in the synagogue, a wander- 
ing and perhaps crazy philosopher, who had never 
seen an army, or handled a sword, and who despised 
the Pharisees! It was absurd, madness itself! A 
carpenter in place of a prince ; a preacher instead of a 
warrior; an obscure Galilean in place of a scion of 
David ! The Scribes and the Pharisees laughed the 
idea to scorn. 

2. But even had they accepted Him, He would not 
accept them in their pride and sin. As their 
prejudices hindered them from seeing the Messiah 
in the carpenter, so their sins, their worldliness, 
their love of the first places, their cruelty to the poor, 
their corruption, made them hateful to the Son of 
God. Merciful as He was to penitent sinners, He 
had no pity for such hypocrites. They were made to 
understand from the beginning of their relations with 
Him that repentant publicans, weeping Magdalens, 
apostolic Levis, fishermen like Peter, were more 
acceptable to Him than the whited sepulchres seated 
in high places. The corruption and the hypocrisy of 
the Jewish leaders must have been extraordinary at 
this period. While they went about praying long 
prayers at the street-corners, and in the market-place ; 
or in time of fasting carried pallid and emaciated 
faces before the people ; or displayed the most rigid 
exactness in carrying out the details of the Mosaic 
ritual ; at the same time their greed for public po- 
sition was notorious, their injustices against the 



THE SCRIBES AND THE PHARISEES. 23 

poor were public talk, and their secret corruption was 
as marked as tlieir outward elegance. Their domi- 
neering and ugly insolence had long made them hated 
of the people, who listened with joy to the denuncia- 
tions heaped upon them by the Precursor and Christ. 
They hated Christ because He would not be a party to 
their foulness, would not secure them in their high 
places, would not sanction their iniquities, and 
threatened to remove them from the seats they so un- 
worthily hlled. They were mere worldlings, who 
sought a Messiah that would minister to their pas- 
sions and secure their private interests. 

3. They deserved and received the scorn of Christ. 
One shudders at the tremendous denunciations hurled 
at these faithless leaders in the presence of the people 
whom they were supposed to control, denunciations 
which they had to accept in silence and to rave over 
in the secrecy of their councils against the Messiah. 
As they never approached Him unless with the pur- 
pose of humiliating and entrapping Him, so He 
never received them but with coldness, or open scorn, 
or withering denunciation. " O generation of vipers, 
how can you speak good things, whereas you are 
evil?" is his saying in Matt. xii. Another time He 
quotes Isaias against them : " This people honoreth 
me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." 
To His disciples He said of them : " They are blind 
leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, 
both fall into the pit." When the children cried out 
in the temple, " Hosanna to the Son of David !" and 
the indignant Pharisees asked why He did not rebuke 
them, He replied with perfect scorn : " Yea, have you 
not read. Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings, 



24 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

thou hast perfect i3 raise?" That they might know 
He was informed of their plottings against His sacred 
life, He described for them the parable of the man 
who owned a vineyard, and placed his workmen in 
it; but these were vicious ingrates, who longed to 
seize the vineyard for their own; and they killed 
their employer's agents one after another, until he 
sent his own son to reason with them, sure that they 
would reverence him. But they killed the son also 
in the hope of securing the vineyard for their own. 
" And when the chief priests and the Pharisees had 
heard his parables, they knew that he spoke of them." 
— Matt. xxi. But all His utterances against them 
were summed up in the declaration : " Amen I say to 
you that the publicans and the harlots shall go into 
the kingdom of God before you;" and in that terrific 
outburst contained in the twenty-third chapter of St. 
Matthew: "Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees." 
Read the list of His epithets against them : hypo- 
crites, blind guides, foolish, full of rapine and un- 
cleanness, whited sepulchres, full of hypocrisy and 
iniquity, serpents, generation of vipers, robbers of 
the widow, and children of hell. Thus described 
have they gone down to all the generations of men. 

III. Their Punishment. 

1. So thoroughly had they exhausted the patience 
of the Father and Son, so desperately had they 
cut down every movement of grace in their own 
hearts, so bitterly had they clung to evil in the face 
of the wonders worked among them, that Christ 



THE SCRIBES AND THE PHARISEES. 25 

foretold their punisliment long before ihey had 
hurried Him to violent death. " Behold, your house 
shall be left to you, desolate." — Matt, xxiii. "Amen 
I say to you, there shall not be left here a stone 
upon a stone that shall not be destroyed." — Matt, 
xxiv. His prophecies were fulfilled to the letter. 
Many a Scribe and Pharisee who stood and mocked 
beneath the cross of Calvary lived to see the de- 
struction of the temple and Jerusalem, and the 
wiping out of the two classes who had done so much 
to spill the precious blood of John, and had com- 
passed the cruel death of the Son of God. Jerusalem 
has come to life again, but the temple and the Scribes 
and the Pharisees are seen no more. The memory 
of that majestic structure is revered by all men ; the 
memory of the Scribes and Pharisees is held in exe- 
cration. The Jews still wander over the earth, but 
their leaders have no longer place in the councils of 
men. Christ has written their shameful place in 
history. 

2. The sin of the Pharisee is hypocrisy first; and 
second it is the abuse of great graces. What about 
the Pharisees of the present moment? Have we none 
amongst us ? Behold this Catholic sitting in the high 
places of the world, giving generously to all public 
charities, who avoids the sacraments, and derives his 
immense income from direct oppression of the poor, 
through miserable wages and long hours of labor, 
through dishonest combinations with other merchants 
to control market prices. Eegard this intelligent 
pagan, well educated, well situated, who for a lifetime 
has witnessed the marvels wrought in the world by 
the religion of Christ, and yet has never dared to 



26 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

sacrifice pleasure to truth and follow the Christ. 
Here is a man who makes with tremendous reverence 
the sign of the cross, and does not hesitate to leave 
his wife and children in necessity, while he spends 
his wages in drink. The world is full of Scribes and 
Pharisees at this moment, and a good number of them 
can be found among Catholics. They are as detest- 
able as their ancient forerunners. The denunciations 
of Christ apply to them, and the punishment of the 
Pharisees hangs over them. Let them not be de- 
ceived. Their house shall finally be left to them, 
desolate. The gospel of Christ has been preached to 
the civilized world, and its graces have been poured 
out upon the nations far more thoroughly even than 
in the days of ^he Saviour. If the Scribes and the 
Pharisees were condemned in time and eternity for 
rejecting the Precursor and the Saviour, how shall 
the modern world, so familiar with Christianity, 
escape hell for its indifference to Christ? 



(ge0pon0t6tftfte6 of C^xxetiane. 

The night is past and the day is at hand; let its, therefore, cast 
off the iDorks of darkness and put on the armor of light. — Rom. 
xiii. 12. 

OUTLINE. 

1. Whoever has heard the gospel of truth thereby assumes a certain re- 

sponsibility. 

2. The messagre and witness of the Church impose on men a certain re- 

sponsibility. 

3. To get rid of it men persecute and deny the Church, as the ancient 

world slew the Prophets, the Precursor, and finally the Christ. 

4. The responsibilities of Christians and how they are to be carried are 

learned from various illustrious examples. 

5. The special graces poured upon individual Catholics make their re- 

sponsibility heavy, 

6. Our responsibility to ourselves, our neighbors, and our God. 



I. Grace and its Kejection. 

1. The old world had faith and hope kept alive in 
it by the nation of the Jews, taught and inspired by 
the holy prophets to look for the coming of Christ, 
to announce Him to the world, and so to strengthen 
the tradition among the Gentiles that a great leader 
would one day deliver the w^orld from its sorrows. 
The angels, the Magi, and the doctors of the law bore 
testimony in various ways to the birth of Christ when 
that event occurred. John the Baptist and the won- 
drous miracles of Jesus both testified to the Jews 
that the Messiah had at last come into the world. 
For the nation of the Jews, and for all the strangers 
who had heard prophets or angels, Magi or the Bap- 

27 



28 THE chaplain's sermons. 

tist, who had seen the miracles of Christ, or had in 
any way distinctly learned of faith in Christ, there 
at once arose an obligation to respond in some way 
to the grace granted to them. Since God had chosen 
them for witnesses to His manifestations, both grace 
and reason urged them to accept and use His gifts ; 
and when they failed to do so of their own fault, they 
incurred a guilt similar to that which brought such 
woe on Bethsaida and Corozain. " For if in Tyre and 
Sidon had been wrought the mighty works that have 
been wrought in jon, they would have done penance 
long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall 
be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment 
than for you." — Luke x. 

2. From the ascension of Christ the Church which 
He founded has been in every age the well-known 
witness to His life and mission, and has made known 
to the world by every means in her power the destiny 
of men under Christ. This testimony of the Church, 
so freely given to the civilized and the barbarous 
world, imposes on men the responsibility of acknowl- 
edging it as God intended. Catholics are more 
specially bound to this acknowledgment, since each 
moment of their lives has been directly blessed and 
sustained by Christ, that they may bear constant 
witness to the truth. Their responsibility is the 
heaviest of all. If the savage who has just heard of 
the Blessed Trinity, eternal life, and the danger of 
its loss, and in whose soul a ray of light has descended 
to urge him to accept what he has heard, be bound to 
respond to the particular grace offered him, how 
much more is the Christian bound to respond to all 
graces, who has been so carefully and lovingly tended 



RESPONSIBILITIES OF CHRISTIANS. 29 

by Christ from liis conception to his grave. This 
responsibility cannot be shirked. If for every idle 
word that men shall speak, they must render account 
of it in the day of judgment, surely the graces placed 
at their disposal must also be accounted for, as the 
money placed at the disposal of a servant by his 
master must be returned with interest. Here are Our 
Lord's own words to the foolish servant: "Thou 
oughtest therefore to have committed my money to 
the bankers, and at my coming I should have received 
my ow^n with usury." — Matt. xxv. 

3. Alas, how easily we free ourselves from the heavy 
responsibility imposed upon us. The Jews put 
many of their prophets to death, the court of Herod 
laughed at the mission of the Magi, Herod slew the 
Innocents to reach the Christ, John the Baptist was 
accused of having a devil, was imprisoned, and ig- 
nominously i)ut to death, and Christ Himself, after a 
life so beautiful that only the depraved could have 
rejected it, was crucified. The history of the Church 
has been a history of persecution, now in one form, 
again in another. The arena to-day, Bismarck to- 
morrow, Freemasonry the third day! But always 
persecution ! Because men are so bent on ignoble and 
unlawful pleasures, they will not hear of responsi- 
bilities that interfere with their pleasant sins; and 
they are willing and even eager to slay, or imprison, 
or banish the witness to the truth, who stands in the 
market-place crying out to all men their destiny and 
the demands it makes upon them. And bear in mind 
that it is not alone the stranger who is guilty of this 
persecution. How many an unfortunate Catholic has 
raised hand and voice against the truth, either by 



30 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

stifling conscience within himself, or by direct attack, 
or by bad example, or by cultivating wilful ignorance 
of the obligations of faith. " He came unto His own, 
and His own received Him not." — John i. 

II. Nature of our RESPONSiBiLrriES. 

1. It is of serious importance then that we should 
all know our responsibilities, and how minutely they 
must be looked after, if we are to withstand success- 
fully the judgment after death. David sings in one 
of his psalms, Thou hast decreed that thy command- 
ments be most carefully observed; and Christ de- 
scribes His Eternal Father as a most jealous God, 
who will have the last jot of His own. What He has 
given us we must return to Him with interest. Ob- 
serve how all the characters in the sacred drama of 
the Advent season and of the Christmas festival re- 
sponded to the immense graces and favors with which 
God honored them; and learn from their example 
what labors we must endure to carry out the designs 
of the Master in our regard. The Angel Gabriel an- 
nounced to Our Lady the honor God wished to bestow 
upon her in making her the mother of His Son ; the 
same glorious messenger had just informed Zachary, 
the father of John the Baptist, of the coming birth of 
John ; he also spoke to St. Joseph in his sleep to have 
confidence in the integrity of Mary, and again when 
it was time to take the Child and His mother and fly 
into Egypt; and to the shepherds watching their 
flocks on the hills around Bethlehem he brought the 
news of the birth of their King. Mark the i^rompt- 
ness with which all these people, so greatly honored, 



RESPONSIBILITIES OP CHRISTIANS. 31 

responded to the graces oifered them. The virgin re- 
plied to the Angel's message, "Behold the handmaid 
of the Lord, may it be done unto me according to thy 
word;" St. Joseph's mind was set at rest in the first 
instance, and in the second he did not hesitate a 
minute to obey the Angel's command; the shepherds 
arose on the instant and hastened to adore Christ on 
His manger throne. Faith and love conspired to 
make their obedience as illustrious as the grace 
received. 

2. With what courage the Kings of the East fol- 
lowed that star which announced to them the birth of 
the God-Man. The Jews were too wrapped up in 
their daily affairs to discover if the time had not 
come for the fulfilment of the prophecies, and they 
waited for these devoted strangers to frighten them 
by the inquiry, Where is he that is born King of the 
Jews? In spite of the long journey, the temporary 
disappearance of the star, the apathy of the Jews to 
their own King, they persevered to the last. How 
greatly were they rewarded ! Old Simeon w^aited a 
lifetime in the temple looking for the advent of that 
Child, whom he was to see and bless, as the Holy 
Ghost assured him, before his holy eyes closed on 
this world. The delay did not weary him, and his 
faithful correspondence with grace was rewarded by 
that wonderful scene of the Presentation, when Jesus 
and Mary and Joseph came unto him, and he held in 
his arms the Holy One of Israel, the long-desired of 
the world. All these famous souls owe their heavenly 
happiness and their earthly fame to the promptness 
and intelligence with which they answered the de- 
mands of God. Imagine for a moment the loss to 



32 THE chaplain's sermons. 

them had these commands found them sleeping, or 
incredulous, or wrapped up in the affairs of the 
world. 

3. What excuse is there for us, that we are not as 
prompt to recognize our responsibilities, and as eager 
to fulfil them? We often say flippantly, it has not 
been our happy lot to receive special visits from the 
angels, illuminations from the Holy Spirit, and inter- 
views with the Kings. What blindness ! God has 
done as much for us in ways suited to our conditions 
as for the famous saints of the past. Were we to 
make a list of the favors heaped upon us as members 
of the one true Church, a book would not be able to 
hold the account. Look around you on the multitude 
that know not God. Compare the details of your life 
with theirs. Before you were conceived the grace of 
Christ had long been busy preparing for you a relig- 
ious father and a pious mother, a clean orderly home, 
devoted friends and relatives, a well-regulated govern- 
ment, opportunities of all kinds for clean and beauti- 
ful living. A few days after birth the waters of 
baptism flowed upon your soul, your first lessons 
were those of prayer to God; the Church waited for 
the dawn of reason in you to bring you to the mass, 
the sacraments; the priest and the guardian angel 
were ever at your side through the years of youth; 
sermons, advice, useful books, missions, retreats, in- 
structions were multiplied for you ; every step of the 
way was guarded and beautified in the most wonder- 
ful manner. In point of fact the miracles of the first 
Advent, at which we all wonder, become in our day 
the daily incidents of common lives, so that they seem 
wonderful no more, and are even forgotten. Why 



RESPONSIBILITIES OF CHRISTIANS. 33 

should our brethren without the Church have been 
left without these manifold graces, and we have been 
overwhelmed by them? Are we not bound, there- 
fore, by greater responsibilities than they? And if 
we fail to respond will not our failure bring us hea\der 
punishment most deservedly? "And that servant 
who knew the will of his lord, and prepared not him- 
self, and did not according to his will, shall be beaten 
with many stripes." — Luke xii. 

III. Use of Our Eesponsibilities. 

1. In this Advent time let us examine once more 
the duties of our position as Catholics to discover our 
remissness and arouse our interest. We have seen 
how the faithful souls of the first Advent acquitted 
themselves of their duties ; we have also seen how the 
Scribes and Pharisees deliberately rejected the graces 
poured upon them at that time ; we have now to ask 
ourselves whether we stand in this Advent with Mary, 
Joseph, the Kings, and the shepherds, or with the 
unfortunate leaders of the Jewish nation. God has 
made us the channel of His wonderful graces for our- 
selves and for our neighbors. Have we deepened 
that channel with the years so that it now flows deep 
and broad, carrying joy to all dependent upon us, or 
have we allowed it to grow shallower as we advanced 
in years toward our final judgment? Have we 
allowed it to become choked with the mud and slime 
of this world, so that we are less pure and devoted to- 
day after forty or fifty years of life than in the days 
of our childhood and youth? How heartily men con- 
demn the sleepy pilot whose drowsiness brought 



34 

wreck to the noble ship, how deeply they curse the 
drunken engineer whose stupor of drink hurled a 
score of human beings to a cruel death, how universal 
is execration of the false leader who drove his country 
to ruin through his ambition ! But what of the false 
souls to whom God confided the salvation of His 
children, only to see these little ones neglected and 
lost? What of the lazy and faithless parents, the un- 
grateful children, the harsh and cheating employers, 
the untrustworthy and thieving servants, the dissolute 
youth with their scandalous lives, who should have 
held the light of Christ up before men, before chil- 
dren, friends, and fellows, yet preferred to extinguish 
it in their own lives, and so extinguished it for many 
others? If these condemn the Scribes and the 
Pharisees, then must they condemn themselves, for 
they have sinned in precisely the same way. 

2. They console themselves with the thought that 
they have done no harm to Christ, and have kept 
their evil to themselves. They forget that they have 
never roused themselves to one real act of the love of 
God. They have feared Him, as the lord of life and 
death, before whose throne they may be forced to go 
this moment ; they have trembled at the thought of 
His hell, which their conduct has deserved; but 
neither fear nor trembling has stirred their hearts to 
love. The first and greatest commandment is that we 
love God with all our hearts. They are unable to 
observe it, and they will die without having accom- 
plished the first and greatest duty of religion. Wake 
then, dear brethren, from the sleep which has held 
you too long. This is the season when all men should 
be awake to meet the coming King. Turn away from 



RESPONSIBILITIES OF CHRISTIANS. 35 

sin, and look into tJiese grave responsibilities which 
rest upon you as servants of God. You are all 
preachers of the gospel of Christ to your dependents, 
your friends, your neighbors. They must see and 
feel in you, and even share with you, the graces of 
your baptism, confirmation, and all the other sacra- 
ments which you have received. You are the lamps 
of Jesus Christ, whom He has filled with fragrant, 
long-burning oil, and your light must shine before 
men so clearly that none shall be in doubt but that 
you are truly the servants of Christ. Woe to you, 
as formerly to Scribe and Pharisee, if the light has 
gone out, and men find you a stumbling-block in the 
darkness. 



Z^t 'immdcutatt Conupiion. 

Behold from hencefoi'th all nations shall call me blessed. — 8t. 
Luke i. 48. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The doctrine of Mary's spotless conception approved by Pope Pius IX. 

2. The share of the laity in the declaration of a doctrine. 

3. The instinctive belief of Catholics in Mary's imnaaculate conception. 

4. The Prophet Isaias is the first to foretell the Virgin's future glory. 

5. The virginity of Mary and her Divine maternity. 

6. The one measures her personal, the other her public dignity. 

7. Through love for Mary the people discover and reject errors respect- 
ing Her Son. 

8. Thus she guards Jesus in the people's hearts, as once she guarded 
Him from Herod. 

9. Her increasing greatness before men indicates to theologians her 
spotless conception. 

10. To the faith and love of His Son's followers God leaves the declaration 
of this truth. 

11. Greatly is Mary loved and honored of the people, but still more so of 
Her Divine Son. 

I. The Prophecy Fulfilled. 

1. A fact which sharply distinguishes Catholics 
from other believers in Christ is the celebration of 
this day, passed over by millions of Christians who 
are ignorant of the truth it commemorates, and pity 
us believers; while on the other hand millions of 
Catholics give the day double honor for their neglect, 
and thank God for giving us so pure and spotless a 
mother. It is interesting to recall that the believing 
world once divided on the question of Christ's 
divinity ; the assembled church decided the question 
at Nice, and the Arians, finding themselves suddenly 
unchristian, died out. Not many centuries back 
theologians were divided on the question of Mary's 

36 



THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 37 

immaculate conception; Pius IX. by his declaration 
of the doctrine forever closed the disi^ute. Before 
it ended in both cases every argument for and against 
that man could offer from reason, history, tradition, 
scripture was well considered ; then the church pro- 
nounced decision, and so careful was that judgment, 
so exhaustive had been previous controversy, that 
these questions have never been re-opened in a hostile 
spirit with any profit to mankind. 

2. Note the share the people had in helping to 
these decisions. The bishops in council with the 
Pope at their head made the formal and precise state- 
ment of the doctrines ; but long previous the Holy 
Spirit, moving teachers and hearers alike, had brought 
the people to accept and cherish with the instinct of 
faith what the teachers had accepted from grace and 
study together. The individual members of the 
church are at no time deprived of a proper share in 
the development of doctrine. They are now building 
up the future declaration of the dogma of the As- 
sumption by their enthusiasm in celebrating the 
fifteenth of August. Theologians will point to that 
universal enthusiasm in the day of final discussion. 
In every age the Christian has this share in the evo- 
lution of truths. So that it is no less an honor to be 
a listener to the word, silent and humble, than to be 
its most eloquent teacher. Before God the unedu- 
cated faithful, believing and praying, have as honor- 
able share in the declaration of a dogma as the 
glorious doctor of the Church. 

3. Hence in to-day's feast we not only glorify God 
and His Blessed Mother, we also honor our fathers 
for the steady faith, the quick response to the Holy 



38 THE chaplain's sermons. 

Spirit, which made possible the feast. We know it 
was the pious and pure lips of our dear ones that be- 
sought God to give to a sure instinct the immortality 
of a dogma. We know their strong faith helped to 
give it shape. God has so willed it that man shall 
have a large share in his own redemption. We are 
often told by our enemies that we are only a dumb 
herd, believing at the command of our drivers. Here 
is our answer. Spontaneously we fulfil the prophecy 
of the Queen of prophets. Every age calls her 
blessed ; teachers and taught with the same impulse 
cry out; all nations except her from the common 
taint while the doctors are studying the reasons for 
exemption. The Pope and bishops of the year 1854 
declare the dogma, but the Christians of all races and 
all times and all conditions have held the truth, and 
longed for its acceptance. The Holy Spirit does not 
drive a dumb herd. He leads a human people. 

n. The YniGMN Mothee. 

1. Isaias the Prophet was the first to define the 
future greatness of Mary in his distinct prophecy of 
her virginity. God had, indeed, announced to Adam 
a deliverer, and Moses had foretold another leader 
like himself. But Isaias said: "Hear, O House of 
Israel ! the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. . . . 
Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, 
and His name shall be called Emmanuel." — Isa. vii. 
14. When the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, her 
reply to his message clearly shows that her virginity 
had already been consecrated to God, and that she 
was prepared to surrender the dignity of Divine 
motherhood rather than lose it. When the woman in 



THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 39 

the crowd cried out to the Saviour, " Blessed is the 
womb that bore Thee, and the breasts that gave Thee 
suck," He replied, "Yea, but more blessed are they 
that hear the word of God and keep it." The Son of 
God and His mother were of one mind on the matter, 
and that mind was verj different from the Protestant 
theory. To serve God perfectly was of greater im- 
portance than to hold Mary's high position. Thus 
thought the Mother of God in preferring her virginity 
to her glorious maternity; thus thought the Father 
when He chose a virgin for His Son's mother. 

2. Chastity is a virtue in the virgin and in the un- 
married alike; but virginity is the noblest form of 
chastity . In this fact lies the reason why the Mother 
of God remained a Virgin. After her Son she was to 
be the glory of the human race. She could have been 
a chaste and spotless mother, indeed, without vir- 
ginity, but her chastity would have been inferior in 
degree to that of many saints, an inferiority which 
God would not permit. Eeason rejects the supposi- 
tion as heartily as faith rejects it. The maternity of 
Mary is the measure of her dignity in the church ; 
but the measure of her worth is the spotless purity of 
her soul, the intensity of her detachment from all 
things, the strength of her devotion to God, all in- 
dicated by her virginity. Catholics love to say of 
her with truth: "The Lord hath placed His taber- 
nacle in the sun." They rejoice to believe of her that 
" this gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no 
man shall pass through it: because the Lord, the 
God of Israel hath entered in by it, and it shall be 
shut. For the Prince, the Prince himself shall sit in 
it, to eat bread before the Lord." — Ezechiel xliv. 2, 3. 



40 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 



m. The Lvimaculate Conception. 

1. In all this we have heard no word of the Immac- 
ulate Conception. The Spirit of God, breathing into 
the millions of Christians that have lived and died in 
the last eighteen centuries, drew from them one con- 
tinuous prayer for certainty as to this doctrine. It 
was left to the faith and love of the people to discover 
her exemption from the common lot. It came about 
very simply. A teacher of error strove to destroy 
the Divinity of Christ, but the people refused to de- 
pose the Blessed Mother from her exalted throne. A 
second teacher of error distinguished between the 
personality of God and man in the Christ, making 
two persons where there was but one ; again the people 
refused to follow the erroneous teaching ; with them 
she could never be less than the mother of the Person, 
the mother of God. The theologians routed the 
heresies scientifically, but the people, who cannot 
follow abstruse reasoning, were saved from heresy by 
their simple love of the Blessed Mother. They could 
not understand the hair-splitting of the heretics, but 
they were indignant at the wrong to be inflicted on 
the Mother. 

2. The constancy of the faithful made plain two 
facts to the teachers : first, that as in the days when 
Jesus was a little child. His mother cared for and 
defended Him, so now she defended Him and cared 
for Him in the hearts of the people ; and second, that 
in becoming the Mother of God her office was to be 
perpetual and of age-long service to the church. 
They saw devotion to her blossoming spontaneously 



THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 41 

among the people, and renewing its bloom with each 
generation ; then they began to search the Scriptures 
in order to find the Scriptural foundation for this work 
of the Holy Spirit. The result is seen and made 
comprehensible to the simplest mind in the popular 
Litany of Loretto. The faith and learning of all the 
ages unite in calling her the Mother of God, the ever- 
virgin mother, the purest, chastest, most wonderful 
of mothers ; the most renowned, powerful, and mer- 
ciful of virgins ; the mystical rose, the tower of David, 
the golden house, the ark of God's everlasting cove- 
nant with men ; the gate of heaven and the morning 
star; the actual Queen in name and excellence of all 
the prophets, patriarchs, apostles, martyrs, confes- 
sors, and virgins that have served God perfectly, and 
perfectly honored men. 

3. Little by little, stone by stone, our fathers built 
up the edifice of her greatness. As they built other 
truths presented themselves. As her dignity, her ex- 
alted office, her perfect virtues came home to them 
slowly and surely, they began to declare that one fact 
alone could explain this ever-increasing majesty and 
influence: the Mother of the Lord was conceived 
without sin, and had never been under its dominion. 
The conclusion was irresistible. "Within five cen- 
turies of her death they were discussing the question, 
perhaps earlier, if we had the records. It was not 
until the ninth year of Pius IX. that the fact was 
pronounced a dogma of the faith. At that time the 
world was sneering at Catholics for the honors paid 
to Mary. It had already attempted to destroy her 
virginity, her honor eve]i, and the divinity of her 
Son: the Church replied by making her almost 



42 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

divine. "Thou glory of Jerusalem, thou joy of 
Israel, thou rich honor of the nation." — Jud. xv. 



lY. The Yigtoby of Faith. 

1. God might have told us explicitly in the Scrip- 
tures that the Mother of His Son was utterly sinless ; 
He tells us that she shall crush the serpent's head, 
and shall be a Virgin ; His holiest angels bow before 
her, humbly salute her ; hers is the gift of prophecy ; 
the Kings of the East acknowledge her divine 
maternity. Yet to the faith and love of His Son's 
followers He leaves it to discover her spotless concep- 
tion, the perfection of her nature; to the least and 
poorest as well as to the greatest. They proclaim it 
with a courage and a clear vision that surely make 
the voice of the people the voice of God, and they 
proclaim it while the world sneers at them. 

2. Love and honor the Blessed Mother as we may, 
the entire Church can never surpass the love and 
honor received from her Son. He never forgets, as 
we too often do, that the first embrace, and the last, 
which He ever received from a mortal, was in her 
arms ; that the first look of His human eyes in the 
cave of Bethlehem was for her, and for her also His 
last earthward glance from the cross ; that she taught 
Him His first words in the house of Nazareth, and 
heard His last upon Calvary ; as when a child in His 
moments of suffering He ran to her for sympathy and 
aid, so in the mortal anguish of His passion He must 
have sighed for the help and sympathy of her spotless 
mother-love. If we sometimes forget these things, 
brethren, we can surely never forget the holy human 



THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 43 

lips that have invoked her name; the saints and 
martyrs, the common sufferers that have cried to her 
in supplication. Can they who have stood at the 
deathbeds of their beloved, and heard the last prayers 
from dying lips, forget how they mingled the names 
of Jesus and Mary. Never! and never again from 
the human heart, any more than from human history, 
can human power root out the influence of the Virgin 
Mother, whom all are drawn to, but whom Catholics 
alone love and honor with truth and with true 
devotion. 



C^xietmiXB ©djj. 



For this dap is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in 
the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall 
find the infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes and laid in a man- 
ger. — LuJceii. 11, 12. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The whole world, both friendly and hostile, pauses each Christmas be- 

fore the crib of Bethlehem. 

2. The scene of the Nativity is one of ordinary family life, father, mother, 

and Child. 

3. But this Child has been long foretold as the glory and salvation of 

mankind. 

4. To save the world men look to statesmen, sages, warriors ; but God de- 

pends on a Child. 

5. God's wisdom made clear to us by the familiar fact that the child rules 

the world. 

6. The child is the emblem of Christianity in his meekness, poverty, and 

purity. 

7. Unless the world possess his natural poverty it goes down to ruin. 

8. Unless it have his willing obedience to its own laws it must infallibly 

perish. 

9. Unless, in the main, it practise his chastity disease will invade and de- 

stroy it. 

I. The Babe of Bethlehem. 

1. On Christmas the willing and unwilling world 
stands at guard over the manger of the Christ. The 
willing Christian bows with the shepherds before the 
Son of God, the philosopher acknowledges the birth 
of the greatest mind among men, the pagans cannot 
refuse to the ever-recurring mystery of birth a hom- 
age which to deny would be an insult to themselves. 
The Christians accept a Kedeemer and a God, the 
philosophers reverence the greatest human force 
which time has brought forth, the pagans are willing 
to celebrate in this event the renewal of the race. 

44 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 45 

But, willing or unwilling, the entire world pauses 
each year before this Child, as it has done for twenty 
centuries, as it must do to the end ; all questions of 
mind, and body, and soul, and the expression of these 
in society, law, science, and art must enter His birth- 
place to account for their agreement or difference with 
Him. 

2. In the scene itself there is nothing to explain 
this universal homage. A woman of rare character 
nurses the infant; a man of holy mien attends on 
both ; the Child is beautiful in helplessness and inno- 
cence; but only the shepherds and the illuminated 
see and hear the joy and the hymns of the celestial 
world. It is the everyday scene of life : the family 
and the home. Thus every human being comes into 
the world, and is met on the threshold by the 
mother's arms, by the father's blessing and joy; and 
no matter how mean the spot, how beggarly the 
actors, it becomes sanctified by the entrance into 
nature of its king, mortal in body but immortal in 
soul, and with an everlasting career before him. 

3. True, this child has been expected of the nations, 
foretold of the Almighty and of the prophets, desired 
of the great souls of the past. The noblest book of 
time derives its glory from Him, its sublimity and 
hope from His character and His coming ; the only 
poets and saints of the early world that are known to 
history found in Him the inspiration of their genius. 
Were an artist to paint these noble spirits of the past 
in one group, Bethlehem would be the perspective of 
the picture, and their grand faces would be turned in 
its direction with the one expression of hope and de- 
sire. The present world has justified their hopes and 



46 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

prophecies, and pays tribute to their faith and un- 
quenchable desire. As the Babe was the hope of the 
past, so is He the joyful possession of the present. 
As all life centered about Him before His birth, so 
all interest hinges on Him to-day. A little Child ! 

II. The Teue Kuler of Men. 

1. The ways of God are beyond all measure by 
men, yet when they are seen man's reason at once 
justifies them, while they excite him to boundless ad- 
miration. God first manifests HimseK to men 
through the helplessness of a child. If there is one 
thing man despises it is weakness ; nor can he under- 
stand how absolute weakness can overcome absolute 
violence. The philosophers were in a sad condition 
for a few centuries before Christ with the grand 
failure of their schemes to revivify the rotten world. 
They had tried and recommended hundreds of plans 
for the removal of corruption, and the injection of 
strength into society. In all these plans their 
starting-point was a force known to men; a great 
senate, a leader like Augustus, an orator like Cicero, 
a philosopher like Plato, a nation like the Roman. 
God presented them with a Child, poorly born, ob- 
scure, persecuted from the beginning. And the mad- 
dened Jews, who had looked for a combination of 
Solomon, David, Moses, and Joshua, planned to kill 
Him. 

2. Yet man and history have justified the Divine 
plan of redemption. It is not the kings and the 
philosophers who are the rulers and the movers of 
the forces of society ; it is the child. Those guide, 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 47 

administer, judge, execute; but lie rules. He is the 
center of the interest, the care, the love of all men. 
The king himself is the servant of his heir, and a 
most willing and anxious servant. He is the envied 
of the great, for he alone is immortal in his ignorance 
of death, his joy in life, his certainty that present 
happiness is eternal. The millions toil for him, and 
get their best inspirations in toiling for him; the 
sages think out his road, smooth it for his feet, 
struggle with its obstacles; kings and legislatures 
execute the sage's schemes in his behalf. One has 
only to study for a few minutes the details to be in 
wonder over the multiplied activities of this world in 
behalf of the child. 

3. To get a glimpse of his influence look into the 
heart of the mother who surrenders but one child to 
the reaper. Death. The years almost obliterate the 
little grave, but her tears fall as freshly in her age as 
on the day of his burial. In a sacred place for many 
a decade she keeps the little shoes and dresses, the 
faded toys, the primer, the slate, the pencil, that 
were such a joy to him ; and what day in all her pil- 
grimage has not seen them anointed with her holy 
tears? A great name fades from history in half a 
century; but the hand of a little child reaches out 
from its grave over the same period to stir a human 
heart to its noblest grief. In fact, the great strength 
of a mother's love is that its roots are in the memory 
of a child, who may grow to maturity, achieve great- 
ness, fade into decrepitude ; yet the mother sees only 
the child that tugged at her bosom. It was Mary's 
keenest sorrow that she saw on Calvary's cross 
the innocent, helpless Babe of Bethlehem. It was 



48 THE chaplain's sermons. 

Divine wisdom that having spoken to us formerly 
through the prophets, " in these days hath spoken to 
us by His Son," the little Child of Bethlehem. 

III. Keystone of Christianity. 

1. The Child is therefore the emblem of the Chris- 
tian life. It was Our Lord that one day placed in 
the midst of the wrangling Apostles a little child and 
said: "Unless you become as little children, you 
shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." — Matt, xviii. 
3. The meaning is plain ; ours must be the spirit of 
the child in all things ; we must cultivate as an offset 
to the violence of selfishness the conviction of our 
helplessness, our dependence on God ; and as against 
our lust the love of purity, which is secured to the 
child through his innocence. This is only another 
way of saying that the state to which the monk binds 
himself by vow, the true follower of Christ must 
accept as the proper condition for his salvation. 
Poverty, obedience, and chastity, in one sense, are 
as necessary to spirituality in the layman as, in an- 
other sense, they are necessary to the religious. 
They are certainly the characteristics of the state of 
childhood, which has no wealth, no wit but simplicity, 
and finds its chief safety and happiness in obedience, 
its highest protection in its innocence. What then 
becomes of honest wealth, freedom, and pleasure, 
cries the worldling. 

2. The answer is very apt and even overpowering. 
Society itself depends on that very state of poverty, 
obedience, and chastity for its happy continuation. 
The command and the example of Christ, and the 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 49 

laws of society on the one hand, on the other the 
stern conditions of nature, give even the libertine no 
choice between decency based on the three detach- 
ments of the monk, practised on a lower standard, 
and the punishment of the lawbreaker. Is not the 
general condition of living men that of poverty? 
Only the few are born so rich as to need no effort in 
money-making. The individual and the nation alike 
begin existence with the soil and their bare hands as 
the elements of future wealth. At what period in the 
history of any known nations did the majority become 
rich? In fact without poverty the spur to effort is 
lost for the crowd. It is not wealth which ever ac- 
complished anything for man, except as the servant 
of the industrious; and wherever it became the 
master, either of the citizens or the state, the latter 
at once sank into decay. Our Lord declared an 
economic, as well as a spiritual fact, when He cried 
out, "Woe unto you, ye rich." "How hardly shall 
•they that have riches enter the kingdom of heaven." 
"And the rich man died, and was buried in hell." 
To be ever poor, and ever laborious, this is the lot of 
man, and in this consists his happiness ; which even 
the rich man admits, since he is never tired of add- 
ing to his treasure, preferring activity to mere con- 
templation of dead gold. Ask the dead money-kings 
of the past what ease does wealth bring to the heart 
at any time. 

3. Obedience is the necessary condition of man as 
much for the elder as for the child. The latter looks 
utterly to the parent, the parent looks to God, and 
reason points out the necessity of strict deference to 
the laws of existence. Who can refuse to enter the 
4 



50 THE CHAPLAIN*S SERMONS. 

world through the womb of his mother, or to leave it 
when vitality dies? Who can offend the laws of 
nature and live ; throw himself from a height, feed on 
poisons, leap into water, fire, or noxious gases? One 
must eat to live, and work is the condition of getting 
bread. As children we have no choice but to obey, 
as human beings we must live such or perish, as 
members of society we must obey its laws or suffer 
extinction, as dependents upon our surroundings for 
physical necessaries we must conform to their nature 
or seek another world. These are the days of revolu- 
tions, and talk is large and bombastic over our 
powers, rights, liberties; but these essentials no 
revolution can affect, no orations change, and when 
men reject them they do so successfully only by 
suicide. In the moral order we have the same con- 
ditions. The various isms are simply crimes against 
the nature of things as God constituted them ; and 
while they may satisfy the reason for a time, their 
true result is only to blind and deaden men to the- 
inevitable disaster. All men must obey as scrupu- 
lously where their will is free, as where their nature 
binds them ; or suffer accordingly. 

4. It is still more wonderful how necessary from 
the mere conditions of nature is chastity, not as a 
virtue but as a condition. With all the impurity in 
the world, and the desire for it, and the schemes to 
secure indulgence, the grand majority of men are 
compelled to chastity through one or another neces- 
sity. The millions that die before nature or oppor- 
tunity permits impurity ; the millions for whom age 
destroys power and inclination ; the millions happily 
led into control of their inclinations through religion, 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 51 

early marriage, or other influences ; the steady labor 
of the multitude, which means sobriety and normal 
impulses for many millions more; the intervals of 
sickness, and a score of other hindrances ; all serve to 
confine unchastity as a habit to the minority of the 
race. Even those, who through riches and leisure 
are enabled to indulge their passions, suffer from the 
limitations of nature; and with all their desire and 
opportunity they must live for long periods as chaste 
in deed as any virtuous monk, if only to save their 
wretched lives for later indulgence. And just as 
chastity is necessary in the individual so is it neces- 
sary to the race and the state, if they are to survive. 

5. Since, then, poverty, obedience, and chastity 
are necessities for men, both from the command of 
God and the nature of things. Our Lord in His 
scheme of right living would simply give us the merit 
of honorably intending that which in the order of 
nature we must do if we would save ourselves here as 
well as hereafter. To live up to His law with knowl- 
edge we must get His help and His instruction ; and 
for this came He into the world, made Himself one 
of us, came as a child, lived as a child, died as a 
child, and left us His positive declaration that we 
must also become children in docility, simplicity, 
purity, dependence, obedience, attachment to Him, 
indifference to the world. And what else do we be- 
come at the last moment in spite of our pride and 
violence ; when sickness leaves us to be attended as in 
our infancy, and the shadow of death takes our 
thoughts and desires from the money, the estate, the 
success which once fooled us into believing that we 
were gods, able to stand forever on our own merits. 



52 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

We leave the world as we entered it, children. But 
how few have kept until the last the sweetness of soul 
and holy innocence which Jesus and Mary and a few 
of the followers of the Master retained through the 
grace of God to the end. Compare with all that has 
here been said the following quotations from Isa. xi. 
6, and Matt. viii. 

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the 
leopard shall lie down with the kid ; the calf and the 
lion, and the sheep shall abide together, and a little 
child shall lead them. " " And Jesus calling unto Him 
a little child, set him in the midst of them, and said: 
Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and be- 
come as little children, you shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall 
humble himself as this little child, he is the greater 
in the kingdom of heaven." 



WJien a man hath done then shall he begin. — Ecclus. xmii. 6. 



OUTLINE. 

1. The beginning of an enterprise is usually full of interest, and for many 

enterprises this remains the only interest. 

2. To be ever beginning is the best fight men can make against the nat- 

ural tendency to decay. 

3. Those who pursue sin, pleasure, fame, wealth are often in one respect 

models for religious souls who make ragged beginnings. 

4. In the day of resolutions give the soul, as the nobler part, the first 

place and the closest attention. 

5. Give Christ the Lord, our one sure, steadfast Friend, the most steadfast 

resolutions. 

6. Let church, country, family, and friends have their due share of good 

resolves. 

7. This continuous beginning each year is a foretaste of heaven, which is 

the eternal beginning. 

8. The great resolution of the Christian life is that we bend all our ener- 

gies to the true service of Christ in faith, hope, and love. 



I. Never Tire of Beginning. 

1. We are at the doorway of another year, and the 
horizon shines clear with the sun of hope. Once 
more we make a beginning of time, and onr hearts 
are cheerful, because we see in our dreams the 
ploughed field, the scattered seed, the blooming wheat 
and corn, the ripened and gathered harvest, the rich 
returns of a year's labors. Hope always fires our 
hearts thus in the beginning of a work which interests 
us. The beginnings of human things are always in- 
teresting, even where tragedy is certain to overshadow 
the end. The coming of the tender spring, with its 
wealth of color, bloom, and perfume stirs the coldest 
heart, warms the chilliest blood; the strong ship 

53 



54 THE chaplain's sermons. 

setting out upon her long voyage with sails wide 
spread to the wind, the young lovers launching their 
ship of wedded love on life's violent sea, the little 
babe just leaving the font, the sinewy youth plunging 
vigorously into the struggle for fortune, these and 
kindred things touch us all alike. Who is there that 
had not his beginning, his hour of hope and vision 
and lofty purpose? Nor would the most despairing 
of us break in upon these beautiful moments with 
stories of broken lives, of withered hopes, of dreams 
that came to nothing, of labor without reward. It 
would be to small purpose if we did, for men will 
make their beginnings, though all the wrecks of time 
lay hideous on the harbor shore. The hope that 
burns in the youthful heart remains undaunted by the 
tales of experience. It is pitiful that so many be- 
ginnings remain no more than beginnings ; the ship 
founders, or floats waterlogged on strange, deserted 
seas, the lovers become drabs, the babe grows up a 
loafer, the youth reaps the harvest of disaster. 

2. We are always beginning in time, because life 
is a current whose banks are ever changing and ever 
new. Each bend in the river is a new starting-point. 
The babe struggles for speech, the child for knowl- 
edge, the youth for experience, the man for success, 
the old for health and longer living. There is in 
everything mundane a tendency to decay, which is 
unconquerable in the long run ; but the energy of life 
is best shown in resisting its advance until that 
moment ordained by God as the limit of our mortal 
career. Therefore, we should never tire of beginning, 
which is the best evidence of energy and healthful 
activity. And although we have all come to smile 



NEW year's day. 55 

at the custom of taking a fresh start on the first day 
of the year, and often ridicule its new resolutions, the 
custom and the resolutions are part of our nature, 
and more than commendable. It is our fight against 
decay. The resolution is an acknowledgment that 
the past could have been better, it is a sign that we 
know our own weaknesses and are bent upon remov- 
ing them, it is an evidence that hope and will in us 
are not dead, and that we still have vitality sufficient 
to direct our course rather than to drift with the cur- 
rent, helpless and indifferent. 

3. We are often too indifferent or too ashamed to 
make resolutions on this day looking to the better- 
ment of our spiritual condition. We can resolve to 
drink less, to live more carefully as to health, to 
spend less money on gaming, to spend more time at 
home, to read more wisely, to cultivate prudence, and 
other natural virtues ; but in religious matters we are 
not quite so ready. In this point we can take a 
lesson from those concerned in mere worldly affairs. 
Here is the man who pursues the way of sin, and 
finds it pleasant travelling ; on this day he looks back 
at his course, revels once more in its delights, sees 
how they might have been increased, and finds him- 
self urged to a cheerful resolve to continue on his 
way, reserving his forces for those forms of enjoyment 
which give most pleasure with least waste of time and 
health. The man of business carefully examines the 
ground he has travelled, discovers the avenues which 
gave him richest return, and resolves to drop all 
others but these. The man of income and leisure 
goes over the past years with no less care, finds 
numerous pleasures which are a mere waste of time, 



56 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

and others which repay cultivation with interest, and 
resolves to avoid the one and to pursue the other. 
All these materialists enter upon the new year with 
fresh resolves to enjoy life, to make the most of time. 
Should the religious man do less? Should not the 
man who is convinced of his soul's existence and des- 
tiny do as much for eternal life as sinners do for sin, 
rich men for pleasure, business men for trade? 

II. Special Eesolutions. 

1. It is therefore a useful and noble custom which 
urges us to make fresh resolves for the new year in 
all our departments. Very few but will attend to 
matters of health, fortune, and family. It is for sin- 
cere Christians to do as much for their souls, the 
better part of them, which is to survive forever the 
passing interests of this world. The first and best 
resolution for them is that in the coming year they 
will give the soul a chance to rise from the prison of 
routine in which it has been so long confined, and to 
breathe the heavenly mountain air. These divine 
souls of ours, how little we feel for them, understand 
and pity them ! they were made for the companion- 
ship of angels, of Christ Himself, and we bind them 
to ledgers, and fashion, and other slaveries. An 
angel chained to earth and shut off from heaven could 
hardly suffer more. Let us resolve at this moment to 
release them from their prison, to deny ourselves, as 
the epistle says, "ungodliness and worldly desires," 
and to send our souls frequently into the sweet fields 
of prayer, meditation, good reading, to bathe them 
in the grace of the sacraments and of the Holy Spirit, 



NEW year's day. 57 

and above all to give tliem frequent converse witli Our 
Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. 

2. He is the one friend who is ever faithful to the 
soul. We are very proud of our fidelity to our 
friends, and of their devotion to us, which often 
affects us to tears. As often as we think of their kind 
hearts and faithful services we are moved to stronger 
resolves to be worthy of and to return that service 
and love. Yet how poor appears the dearest and 
most helpful friend of longest service beside the 
Master whose love has pursued us from conception, 
and is alone able to succor us in the really trying 
moments of life. Although " the grace of God our 
Saviour hath appeared to all men," and especially to 
the Catholic, it is not certain that even the pious 
Catholics have always a strong and vivifying love for 
their Saviour. They look upon Him as God, they 
know that all things are ruled by Him, they feel cer- 
tain of meeting Him one day at judgment, they have 
a deep regard for His majesty and power, they adore 
Hira by faith in the Blessed Sacrament ; but the one 
thing which He desires they are often unable through 
sheer incompetence to give, — their hearts. They 
rather fear than love Him. In human life it is not a 
pleasant household where the father is feared rather 
than loved, nor would an intelligent and loving father 
care for such a distinction. It is love that Our Lord 
wants, ^pulsating human love, purified and elevated 
by the Holy Spirit, but nevertheless human love. 
The first resolve then of this day should be to acquire 
by petition a true love for Our Master. It is sad 
that too often we do not know how to go about get- 
ting that love. We who are so skilful in stirring our 



68 THE chaplain's sermons. 

hearts to a throbbing love of human beings, and se- 
curing their love in return, even where they care 
little for us at first, are at a loss to discover how we 
shall love Jesus Christ. " Ask and you shall receive. " 
3. Christ and the soul having received the homage 
of our first resolutions, it is inevitable that other re- 
solves should second them for the sake of clearer 
sight and wiser action in our dealings with those 
around us. Loving Christ and freeing the soul from 
bondage to earthly things, we cannot but love the 
church, our country, our family, and our friends 
more deeply and wisely. Yet we must also resolve 
upon these things. As we are often ignorant of 
Christ and our own souls in the higher ways, so are 
we often ignorant of church, country, family, and 
friends. We take them as we take the air, things to 
which we have a strict right every instant of life. 
And we rather expect service from them, as from the 
air, than the rendering of constant and intelligent 
service to them. We work for them, it is true, but it 
is in great part selfish service, that which pleases us 
and does not greatly benefit them. For example, one 
is satisfied with a reasonable alms to the church, a 
bland feeling of patriotism and prompt payment of 
taxes to his country, a supposed commercial educa- 
tion to his children, and the exchange of sentiment 
with friends; yet he may be so ignorant of his 
church's history as not to know the day of its foun- 
dation or the name of its first Pope, unwilling to lift 
a finger for the overthrow of intolerable abuses in the 
state, harsh to his children in exercising paternal 
authority or rarely at home with them, and very 
devoted to friends who care not a button for him ex- 



NEW year's day. 59 

cept when he can help them. These sins are very 
common, and are apt to be grave enough to the 
parties concerned. Therefore, the resolution of this 
day should be, in regard to the Church, some knowl- 
edge of her history and deeper appreciations of her 
claims upon us : in regard to the country a determi- 
nation to play the part of prudent and courageous 
citizens in all matters with which we may lawfully 
interfere ; in regard to our families, the cultivation of 
intimacy with our own and the study of all things 
connected with their welfare ; in regard to our friends 
and neighbors, to seek rather their happiness than 
the gratification of our own selfishness. In all which 
we simply follow the Scriptures: "The first com- 
mandment of all is. Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy 
God is one God. And thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, 
and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole 
strength. This is the first commandment, and the 
second is like to it : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself. There is no other commandment greater 
than these." Thus spoke Our Lord to the Jews ac- 
cording to St. Mark xii. 29. And St. Paul added 
his word in writing to Titus his disciple : " Admonish 
them to be subject to princes and powers." In a 
word, to use the saying of the epistle, "we should 
live soberly, and justly, and godly in this world." 

4. In this way we are forever beginning the 
spiritual life with the day upon which Our Lord may 
be said to have begun His official life, for on this 
day He received His holy name of Jesus. We are 
thus resisting decay at every point, decay in busi- 
ness, in body, in mind, in duty, in soul, and we are 



60 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

living a life bearing a likeness to that life eternal 
for whicli we men are destined. That life is an end- 
less beginning, a morning which never loses the 
glory of the morning, though bright as the noon and 
soft as the evening. All our labors in this world get 
their meaning and their beauty from the life to come, 
and have no beauty or significance without that life. 
We look "for the blessed hope and coming of the 
glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" 
with the great St. Paul. That hope and that coming 
cast their united glory over the simple daily life of 
millions of Christians, and give them a tremendous 
significance. We begin here to end, there to continue 
forever; we labor here in uncertainty often and in 
distress, there all distress is exchanged for joy; our 
greatest and most sucessful enterprises do not secure 
us against anxiety and sorrow here, yet if carried on 
in the proper spirit they earn us eternal peace in 
heaven; very often we are failures from the world's 
standpoint, our fortunes vanish, our children go their 
own ways and our friends desert us until we become 
of no consequence; yet these very disasters, accepted 
with resignation and borne with patience, are coin 
which will make us very rich in eternity. It is cer- 
tainly a good thing to have the peace and confidence 
of success, wealth, health, dear friends, and other 
fine things of earth ; but it is still better to possess 
above these things the peace of Christ, which sur- 
passeth all understanding. 



He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.— John i. 11. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The Magi are astonished to find Jerusalem unprepared for the King they 

were seeking. 

2. The doctors of the law, however, are able to inform them that Bethle- 

hem is to be the birthplace of the Messiah. 

3. On the way to Bethlehem they meet again the star, which would not 

shine over the corrupt City of David. 

4. The opportunity which Herod the Great lost on this occasion. 

5. A similar glorious opportunity lost by the proud leaders of the Jews. . 

6. Strangers greet the King in Bethlehem, while His own stand apart in 

ignorance. 

7. The miserable after-fate of Herod and his dynasty. 

8. The extinction of the Scribes and the Pharisees. 

9. The holy Kings alone come down in history, beloved and honored for 

their faith and courage. 

I. The King's City. 

1. It was truly a sensation which the wise men of 
the East created when they entered Jerusalem, and 
began their inquiries for Him that was born King 
of the Jews. Having lost the star that for so long 
had guided them, it was only natural and sensible 
that they should make their way to the capital city 
of the new King, and look for Him there surrounded 
by His court and His army, the object of adoration 
and love, a prince of his people and the regenerator 
of the world. What a murmur of emotion rose from 
the people of Jerusalem at the sight of these princes 
and their retinue, at the first utterance of that tre- 
mendous question, " Where is He that is born King 
of the Jews?" The people were prepared for the 
question; it was the hope of their lives and of the 

61 



62 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

nation; but the court heard it with misgiving and 
alarm. Their plans for pleasure and power had not 
at any time taken into consideration a new king, a 
new dynasty, even the Messiah ; and His appearance 
at that moment meant disaster for them. All 
gathered about these sages from the mysterious East 
to ask and to wonder. The sages were not less 
puzzled at the general ignorance of the One Being 
for whom the earth longed. At the birth of an heir 
to a great throne, the great few and the common 
multitude stand about the chamber, the ambassadors 
of other nations are in waiting, the majesty just 
brought into the world is saluted with military 
honors, the greeting of race and nations. Yet to the 
immense disappointment of the kings, in His capital 
the new-born King is known only to themselves, 
strangers, and no eye has yet seen Him. 

2. Still, the Magi find that He is not altogether 
unknown. The Scribes and the Pharisees, the 
Doctors of the law, the princes of the court, nay, 
even the king himself, the great and cruel Herod, 
gather together to explain to these ambassadors of 
the Gentiles all that the prophets of the nation have 
foretold of the new King. It is declared upon their 
authority that His birthplace is to be in Bethlehem, 
and the time for His appearance is not distant, if the 
computations are correct. Probably they explained 
their own indifference to the mission of the sages by 
a courteous indication of their belief that the new 
King would appear first in the palaces of the king, so 
stamped with power and glory that no one could mis- 
take or resist Him. The sages in telling their story 
could only say that tradition and prophecy and star 



THE EPIPHANY. 63 

had led them, that they knew nothing of the manner 
of His coming, that their supposition was He would 
be found in the reigning house. The court must 
have smiled at the story of the star. But for their 
wealth and importance the Magi might have been 
accused of a clever trick to secure notoriety and con- 
sequent gain. As it was none considered them more 
than sincere enthusiasts, whose search would end in 
disappointment. Herod, relieved of fear, ironical, 
courteous to the last, accepting the implied compli- 
ment of their inquiry in his city, cautious as became 
the statesman of a slippery age, gave them secret audi- 
ence, asked for further explanations of their motives, 
and dismissed them with the request that they would 
permit him to join them in adoration of the Child, 
when found. 

3. Alas ! outside of Jerusalem the star shines over 
their pathway again ! Its tender light disdained the 
great city ; it was a star of innocence and joy, w^hose 
light was never meant for the polluted town on whose 
throne sat Herod, in whose court schemed a Caiphas, 
within whose limits was Calvary. The Child of their 
search was found in an obscure cave of an obscure 
town, surrounded by common laborers, nursed by a 
woman of the multitude, guarded by a carpenter, too 
poor to pay for the lodging of a merchant, not to 
speak of a prince. Yet how truly were these men 
princes of faith and wisdom is made clear by their 
adoration of the King, their joyful acknowledgment 
of His nature ; falling down they adored Him, offer- 
ing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. What 
privileges the Child lavished on them: to converse 
with Mary and Joseph, to hear the story of the 



64 THE chaplain's sermons. 

wondrous events of the past year, to read the prophe- 
cies of His coming and to see the fulfilment of a few 
with their own eyes, and to carry the Holy Infant 
again and again in their arms. While at a little dis- 
tance slept, ate, drank, schemed, and sinned the 
stupid court of Herod ; too lazy or too busy, too in- 
curious to follow these men, or to set a commonplace 
spy on them, and thus secure the Master of the world. 
Yet can we criticise them for their indifference with 
the certainty that our nation is any the better pre- 
pared for the Christ than were the Jews for Bethle- 
hem? "We have only to look into our own hearts, into 
our own high places and great cities, to feel that the 
star would disdain them as it did Jerusalem, and 
that Herod and Calvary have there a footing. 

II. Lost Oppoetunities. 

1. The peoples of the world might be easily de- 
scribed as the children of lost opportunities. It 
thrills us at this day to see how much the shrewd and 
talented Herod missed when he let the Kings depart 
so easily. He was a man of boundless ambition, 
who would have sacrificed a world to secure for him- 
self a deathless name at the close of a career of des- 
potic power. This was his greatest opportunity. 
He was king of that domain in which Christ was 
born ; to find and adore Him, to present Him to His 
people and to act as regent for His youth would have 
secured for Herod immortal fame and everlasting 
life. Alas ! to see such an opportunity and to use it, 
Herod would have to be born again. Ambition sup- 
ported by crime, a life of sin, had closed his eyes to 



THE EPIPHANY. 65 

truth, as sin closes the eyes of the soul to its own 
advantages. The three Kings came and went carrying 
the gifts of God with them, and Herod saw them de- 
part from his gates never to entertain them or their 
gifts again. His judgment ! 

2. Beside him stood the Scribes and the Pharisees, 
never in their lives so blind as at that critical moment, 
never more deserving of the reproach of the Saviour : 
" Blind leaders of the blind." They could give to the 
Kings with a sneer the exact spot where the Christ 
was to be found, but could not summon enough 
energy to go out and see for themselves. They had 
already formed from their own stormy hearts an idea 
of the Messiah, and to them any other was a manifest 
absurdity. Their joy was power and place, and all 
things necessary to secure and continue their ambi- 
tions ; luxurious lives in splendid palaces, the praise 
and service of men, the control of the nation, success 
in statecraft and war, immense wealth and noble 
blood. And their Messiah was the concrete image 
of this materialism. He was to be a prince of 
David's line, unconnected with carpenters; a warrior 
of genius and success ; an unparalleled statesman and 
an absolute tyrant; whose wealth, power, luxury, 
no less than his faithful observance of the Pharisaical 
law, would astonish and subdue the world to Judaism, 
that is, to the Scribes and Pharisees. Their oppor- 
tunity also came and went with the Kings, for they 
too would have to be made over again to understand 
the Christ. Yet how simple the means, how cheap the 
price at which they would have purchased the grati- 
tude of mankind ; a mere ride to Bethlehem, an ador- 
ation of the Child, and a presentation of Him to the 



66 THE chaplain's sermons. 

people ; and thenceforward the world was theirs and 
immortal life beside. Theirs was Herod's judgment. 
3. He came unto His own, and His own received 
Him not. Oh! the pity of it. The stranger from 
far-off countries alone seizes the opportunity to greet 
and acknowledge the new-born King. The prophecies 
were fulfilled in their coming, but what a shame 
their sole acknowledgment cast upon the chosen 
people. For their faith to feed upon there were only 
the ancient traditions, the accounts of the Holy 
Books of the Jews, the stories of travellers, and last 
of all the star ; what immense difficulties they must 
have faced and overcome to acquire their conviction, 
to understand the star, to reach Jerusalem, to pierce 
the veil of obscurity which hung about the Divinity 
of the Child ; what a contrast the lavish preparation 
spent upon the chosen people! It reminds us of 
those mournful cases, in which the poor pagan, 
standing for half a lifetime without the temple, is 
suddenly pierced with the knowledge and love of 
Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and can never leave 
Him again ; while many a baptized Christian in utter 
indifference to the God he has never recognized with 
all the training lavished on him, can sneer or wonder 
at the enthusiasm of the convert. 

III. The Penalties. 

1. The faith of the Kings had its reward, and the 
infidelity of the court its fearful punishment. Herod 
had lost his last chance, and madness seized him ; 
not the madness of the brain but of the heart, the 
most fearful visitation which man can bring upon 



THE EPIPHANY. 67 

himself. With his powerful brain clear till his death 
hour, but with a heart given over to fury, remorse, 
despair, as really mad as the brain could be, as dis- 
ordered, he passed from one crime to another as sus- 
picion led him. The rumors growing that the kings 
so sneered at had really found the Child and fled the 
land, Herod put to the sword the Innocents of 
Bethlehem, and ferociously pursued the Holy Family 
and the Magi as far as his powder extended. His 
life closed in painful despair. He had proved him- 
self great as the world accounts greatness, he had 
founded a dynasty which was to be snuffed out by 
the Eoman power as one snuffs a candle, the crimes 
of his life were not to sustain it a moment after Caesar 
condemned, several fools were to succeed him on his 
bloody throne to imitate only his crimes and shame 
him by their folh : here was the sum and substance 
of his achievements. He was to go do^vn to history 
as the murderer of infants, and the devourer of his 
own family. 

2. Yet hard as was the fate he brought upon him- 
self it was agreeable compared with that prepared b}^ 
the Scribes and the Pharisees. They are no longer 
to be found on the earth ; with the dynasty of Herod 
they are in the dust. Their name is the universal 
synonym for hypocrisy and vile cunning. They 
possess the dishonor of having led their people into 
that ditch out of which there is no getting. The 
people remain, but they are not ; the temple is gone, 
and the nation is scattered, a reproach wherever they 
are found, no matter how innocent their lives ; their 
rituals, etiquette, interpretations of the law a,re the 
scorn and the ridicule of the sensible and the 



68 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

scholarly; to be and to be known as a Pharisee is 
the special dishonor among men. 

3. The Kings alone stand before history as the 
benefactors of mankind, and their day is the feast-day 
of the nations; it sheds gladness over the whole 
earth ; in Spain the children put little shoes on the 
window-sills on the eve of the feast, that the good 
Kings, who loved one Child so dearly, may fill them 
with gifts on their way to Bethlehem. Their wisdom 
reflects its lustre on the nations who in their day 
knew not God, and on their present descendants. 
They were our representatives before the throne of 
Bethlehem, the representatives of the human race, 
foretold of the prophets and loved of all that since 
have followed the Christ. They arose out of ob- 
scurity and returned to its gloom ; we guess at their 
names, their country, their after-lives; but it is a 
gloom more beautiful than the light of the most pro- 
found history ; for we know they were chosen of God, 
simply by noting the jjersons in the gospel who were 
permitted to recognize the Saviour and the unfor- 
tunate who would not see Him; the one class were 
saints, the other wilful and malicious sinners. The 
Holy Spirit has said also, after the mournful words 
at the head of this discourse : " But to as many as 
hath received Him, He hath given power to become 
the sons of God, to those who believe in His name." 



^. (pAixicL 

Behold a great priest, who in his clays was pleasing to God, and was 
fomidjust, and in the time of wrath was made a reconciliation.— 
Ths Breviary. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The sceptical point to the poor condition of Ireland when the greatness 

of this early missionary is described. 

2. The Irish have again and again been declared an inferior race because 

of their devotion to the true faith. 

3. In declaring this to the whole world, men flung, as it were, a challenge 

in the face of Christ to defend his own. 

4. The Irish exodus of the last fifty years seemed to justify the slanders 

against the people. 

5. Yet it was much to have kept the faith against all persecution, and 

against time itself for so many centuries. 

6. Finally, in this century Christ makes answer to the challengers. 

7. The triumphs of the race and its religion through the very exile which 

was intended to destroy it. 

8. The severe punishment of their enemies, and the vindication of Saint 

Patrick. 

I. The Challenge to Chkist. 

1. The character and labor of St. Patrick have long 
been placed beyond dispute by scholars, and the 
great missionary takes rank with the greatest of his 
time as a miracle of holiness and of devotion. Yet 
in our day, when men look on the miserable social 
condition of the country he Christianized, many a 
sneer touches the lip because the faith has not been 
of material benefit to Ireland. St. Patrick has even 
to be defended against his own children in this matter, 
when national pride gets uppermost in the heart. 
All admit that the wealth and rank of Ireland among 
the nations might have been very high at this moment 
had the Irish joined the English in the deliberate 



70 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

treason against Christ, perpetrated by the delectable 
Henry VIII. and his virtuous court. But it is to be 
doubted if wealth and worldly honor could make up 
to any nation for the disgrace of association with such 
a crew as compassed the destruction of English 
Catholicity. The history of Ireland has yet to be 
written, sad as has been its long and mournful pref- 
ace. And as the years are but minutes to the patient 
Lord, the rest of the volume may so dim with glory 
the tragic past, as to make the time of persecution 
briefer than it now appears. God does not desert 
His saints. To the end He leads them " through the 
right ways," so that no man can point the finger of 
scorn at them. In our day He has justified St. 
Patrick even to the political economists. 

2. When poverty drove the people of Ireland to 
America, the road was made harder by the gratuitous 
insults of certain English journals, which ridiculed 
the sorrowful exodus, and announced to the whole 
world that the meanest part of the British empire 
was pouring itself out on the American shore. No 
order of exile, such as Russia put upon the Jews, 
drove the Irish from their native soil ; in consequence, 
Englishmen were asked for an explanation of the phe- 
nomenon, thousands of citizens flying from the most 
prosperous nation in the world to a political rival of 
the British power beyond the Atlantic wave. The 
reply of certain English leaders in parliament and in 
print was memorable and characteristic. They said 
to the listening world : the Irish are an inferior race 
by nature, and an ignorant, dirty, unprogressive race 
by choice ; having long kept up an unequal conflict 
with their superior rivals, and having reached the 



ST. PATRICK. 71 

end of their resources, they are retreating like van- 
quished barbarians deeper into the wilderness, and 
will soon be absorbed by the wilds of America ; de- 
voted to superstition, eternally hostile to the religion 
of Henry VIII., too stubborn to strike a treaty of 
self-extinction with the English nation, they leave 
their lands to the superior race, and depart to do the 
kitchen work of America, for which their rude tem- 
perament is well adapted. These apologists did not 
explain why their lofty civilization had had so little 
influence upon the children of St. Patrick. The 
penal laws, which made education a crime in Ireland, 
and rewarded such violations of the commandments 
as favored English rule among the Irish, were not 
mentioned; the industrial wrongs suffered by the 
Irish that English manufacturers might grow richer, 
the artificial famines, the premium put upon dirt, 
and other outward shows of wretchedness, were left 
undescribed. 

3. It was simply said, as a self-evident fact, with 
which Europe was well acquainted, that the Catholic 
superstition had degraded the Irish as deeply as the 
Protestant inspiration had lifted the English to the 
pinnacle of glory. English preachers from a thou- 
sand pulpits offered this degraded mob of exiles, 
pouring out of English ports with tearful eyes and 
pallid faces, as a terrific illustration of the wicked- 
ness of Catholicity. If the Irish were mean, igno- 
rant, poor, superstitious, dirty, incapable of political 
power, unworthy to hold their own lands, worship- 
pers of St. Patrick, it was all because of their devo- 
tion to Eome. This was the sole source of their 
vileness. The United States was congratulated iron- 



72 THE chaplain's sermons. 

ically on securing the refuse of Great Britain for the 
building up of its empire. Emerson, the stone 
prophet of a dead Puritanism, referred classically to 
tlie Irish immigration as " the black vomit." In other 
words the fidelity of the people converted from 
paganism to Christ by St. Patrick, their fidelity to 
the Christ of Judea, of Calvary, of Mount Olivet, of 
the Apostles, of the ages of persecution, was made 
the cause of their misery and supposed worthlessness. 
The whole world was made to understand this belief 
of the proud nation which had vanquished St. Peter 
and St. Patrick in its triumph over the bitter obsti- 
nacy of the Irish. Thus a challenge was flung down 
publicly to Christ in the face of the whole world ; His 
most faithful people were made an illustration of the 
results of his principles. 

II. The Answer of Christ. ' 

1. It was impossible that such a challenge should 
go unanswered. Yet the first years of the exodus 
seemed to justify the worst tales of the slanderers. 
No kindly greeting met the Irish in America, deeply 
as they loved the nation which had succeeded where 
they had failed. The sour souls of men like Emer- 
son had curdled the milk of human kindness in the 
land. Poverty and oppression they had left behind, 
cold hearts and mean tongues were their portion in 
the land of the stranger. Even persecution sought 
them out for a brief period, and in liberty's name 
burned their churches, stole their children, bribed 
their orphans and leaders, and shut the doors to for- 
tune and advancement. The bigots could not bear to 



ST. PATRICK. 73 

see them other than slaves, a visible argument against 
the Pope. A few gleams of light shone on their his- 
tory and condition. It was something to have kept 
the faith undefiled, and the race distinct from the 
race of apostates. It was very much to have made 
white chastity a national virtue and fidelity to Peter 
a national tradition at a time when impurity and 
treason ravaged the independent Catholic nations of 
Europe. 

2. Then, of a sudden, the clouds burst from over 
the devoted race, and the Irish stood revealed in the 
radiance of a new day. The eyes of English heresy 
might well have withered before the sight, and the 
lying tongue of Froude certainly met paralysis at the 
spectacle. While the bloody mist of war hung over 
the American Kepublic, and England was bus^^ watch- 
ing the hoped-for tragedy, a new birth had taken 
place, which only the daylight of peace revealed. 
The organization of the children of St. Patrick had 
come to pass under the banner of the cross. In quick 
succession Hughes, McCloskey, Gibbons wore the 
highest honors of the Eoman Church, and held im- 
mense influence over the American people; while 
behind them stood a hierarchy of numbers and dis- 
tinction. Sheridan's superb figure posed before Eu- 
rope as the commander-in-chief of the American 
army, and around him stood a score of fighting gen- 
erals, whose faith and blood boded little good to 
England. Millionaires of every degree, political 
leaders of all shades of ability, representatives in all 
departments of human activity, senators, governors, 
representatives, judges, litterateurs, artists, held their 
own in numbers on American soil, unashamed of their 



74 THE chaplain's sermons. 

faith or their blood. And this wondrous vision was 
repeated in every country that spoke the English 
tongue; in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, 
even in England itself. The inferior race, the dirty, 
ignorant, superstitious race, had in three decades 
shown itseK the very contrary ; or had left it to its 
enemies to explain how inferiority, dirt, ignorance, 
and superstition, under certain circumstances, can 
surpass civilization of the English sort in elevating 
men. Thus did Christ answer the challenge flung 
down to Him so confidently, and thus did he vindi- 
cate his people, and their holy leader. " The Lord 
led the just man in all his ways, showed him the 
kingdom of God, . . . made him honorable in his 
labors, and completed his labors." — Breviary. 

III. The Punishment. 

1. Not only was there vindication, but also punish- 
ment. Very significant, very instructive is that pun- 
ishment. The Anglican heresy has found its strongest 
ally in the English language, so widely spread over 
the globe. The Irish w^ere robbed of their Celtic 
tongue, and had the English tongue forced ujjon them, 
one would think, for the sole purpose of teaching the 
English-speaking nations how deep was the treach- 
ery of the Eighth Henry and his brood of conspira- 
tors against the truth ; and it may be added, for the 
purpose of inspiring the same nations with a hearty 
distrust of this great apostate, so proud of her apos- 
tasy. The Irish and their children have used the 
English tongue as their best weapon, in poetry and 
prose, in politics and journalism, in the home and 



ST. PATRICK. 75 

the forum, for solidifying universal opx)Osition to the 
English name. Thus have they repaid their oppres- 
sor for the robbery of the tongue in which St. Patrick 
spoke to them. 

2. Very proud has England been of her political 
prestige everywhere, and her particular influence in 
certain countries. Her leaders have alv>'ays attrib- 
uted this prestige and influence to the religion of 
Henry YHE. Wherever the Irish have settled, their 
vigorous faith and outspoken opposition have either 
destroyed or neutralized the power of the English 
name. An anti-English policy alone is popular in 
the United States, and no administration dare adopt 
one favorable to England. In Canada and Australia 
men like D'Arcy McGee and Gavan Duffy shook her 
influence by constitutional measures. In Ireland her 
grip has been loosened in the same way. She robbed 
the Irish of their right to live in their own land, and 
in return they have weakened her prestige and influ- 
ence, by marking known the enormities of her rule in 
Ireland and elsewhere. Proud of her heresy, bloody 
in her crimes to graft it on the Irish, she has been 
repaid for her malice by the erection of hierarchies 
in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New 
Zealand, and the resurrection of the Scotch and Eng- 
lish hierarchies, all made possible by the spread of 
the Irish over the world, by her deliberate banish- 
ment of the Irish race from their native isle. In fact, 
wherever the English language is sjjoken at this time, 
the Irish have built up against the English heresy a 
social and religious organization, subversive of its 
influence and humiliating to its pride, which cannot 
be reached by English power. 



76 THE chaplain's sermons. 

3. It is easy to see, therefore, that God has not 
deserted the faithful race, nor forgotten the apostle 
who carried the faith to Erin. It is often said that 
still greater honors than these mentioned would have 
resulted had Ireland remained unstained by degrad- 
ing vassalage to England. Granted. Yet when we 
remember the uncalled-for apostasy of England, and 
the shameful condition of France, when we recall the 
changes which wealth and power produce in the vir- 
tuous, it is not so certain that Ireland would have 
remained faithful and filled so wonderful a place in 
the history of this time. It is evident that her 
history is but beginning. Her years of sorrow are 
mysterious, as human misery must ever be. We 
cannot fathom the suffering of a child, much less the 
suffering, the long martyrdom of a nation. But we 
are close enough to the dawn of Ireland's coming day 
to recognize that it will be very wonderful, if it fulfils 
the promise of this moment. And its glory will not 
be born of bloody conquest or treaty -cheating, but of 
the peace and good will of Christ. 



^f. %OBtp^. 



A holy death makes others divine after death, and glory embraces 
tJwse wlw have earned the palm; but thou, rnm^e blessed in thy 
tconderful destiny, while yet a mortal equalled the celestials in 
the full enjoyment of Ood. — Breviary Hymn. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The splendor of this feast of St. Joseph as it is kept around the world 
is remarkable. 

3. Greatly as public heroes are honored, their celebrations do not com- 
pare with those accorded to the carpenter of Nazareth, 

3. He was chosen as the guardian of Jesus because his life was lofty and 

pure. 

4. He was chosen patron of the Church before any of its great popes and 

doctors because he had so faithfully guarded its Founder. 

5. The most fervid imagination fails in attempting to describe this humble 

man's relationships with Jesus and the Blessed Trinity. 

6. Living for thirty years with the Son of God, he dies in His arms, and 

enters Limbo the ambassador from Jesus to the holy souls in prison. 

7. Since the foundation of the Church his fame has grown with each age, 

and it is piously believed that with Jesus and Mary he rejoices body 
and soul in heaven. 

8. He is not only the protector of the Church, but also the model and 

patron of the dying, and of all faithful fathers aevoted to their 
families. 

I. The Guaedian of Jesus and Maey. 

1. An important feast of the universal Church is 
that of St. Joseph, and its celebration is in its details 
a wonderful thing. The majority of men never see 
beyond the three-mile horizon of their particular 
locality, and to the average Catholic the feast of a 
saint means the public Mass in his honor and a mere 
mention of the saint's name. Yet it would take much 
space and time to tell all the notable and beautiful 
things that will be done this day in St. Joseph's 
honor. Thousands of churches scattered around the 
habitable globe will repeat his glorious name in the 

77 



78 

public prayers, a splendid ritual will do him public 
honor, thousands of priests will recite his office in 
the breviary, sermons will be preached on his life and 
virtues, hymns will be sung to him in all the lan- 
guages of earth, and the Catholic millions will invoke 
him. Could one get above the earth for these twenty- 
four hours, and with angelic faculties see and hear all 
this while the globe revolves under the sun, the spec- 
tacle, the human harmonies would ravish as if from 
heaven. 

2. We are more impressed with the public celebra- 
tion in honor of a civic hero, in honor of Washington 
for instance, or of our dead soldiers on Decoration 
Day, or of the Day of Independence. Napoleon the 
Great is a world's hero, and his fame and genius are 
brought home to the meanest in many w^ays. His 
story is made common in print, his portraits are 
everywhere, his deeds of battle are on fine canvasses, 
in bronze, in books, in engravings, in poems and 
novels and histories, his statues cover France and 
are in the art museums of the nations. Frenchmen 
go wild with enthusiasm at the mention of his name. 
Yet the public celebrations in his honor, in honor of 
Washington, or our dead soldiers, or Independence 
Day are small matters compared with the honors ten- 
dered to St. Joseph on this feast. All nations ob- 
serve it; he is praised in every language; his statues 
adorn a million churches, schools, and homes; his 
altars are buried in lights and flowers ; and the hu- 
man millions, the sick, the unfortunate, the wretched, 
the sinful, the grateful, murmur his name in petition 
and in thanksgiving. What honors could compare 
with these of the universal church? 



ST. JOSEPH. 79 

3. Yet the recipient of so much honor was no more 
than a carpenter of Judea, so obscure that the dates 
of his birth and death are alike unknown, and his 
history can be learned only through a study of the 
life of the Saviour. He had the unique privilege of 
serving the Deity as guardian of His Son. He was 
master of the house of Nazareth, and for m&iiy years 
Jesus was known as his son. " Is not this the car- 
penter's son?" said the irritated villagers of Naza- 
reth. In spite of the obscurity of his life, the church 
chose him as her patron, seeing no inconsistency in 
making him guardian of the church, who had been 
guardian of the church's Founder. In publicly cele- 
brating his virtues and offices, she exhausts her splen- 
dors of ritual. 

n. The Fathee and Pateon. 

1. In selecting a protector for His Son, it would 
have seemed more fitting to have chosen a prince of 
the earth, such as St. Louis was, or David, or Solo- 
mon in his youth; whose genius and power might 
have been at the service of the Saviour ; yet the Eter- 
nal Father chose the carpenter, and scarcely removed 
him from his original obscurity in elevating him to 
his high position. It is evident that He chose a man 
already in love with those virtues and human con- 
ditions which were to be illustrated as the most ex- 
cellent in the life of Jesus ; a man who loved purity 
and chastity and union with God, obscurity, labor, 
prayer, humiliation, and poverty, and had chosen all 
these things as the best of life ; a man who trusted 
absolutely to the providence of God and not at all to 
himself or his kind ; who put God first, his brother 



80 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

second, and himself last; and who in all things was 
just. He must have been a man before whom the 
angels could bow without shame, as did their King ; 
to whom Mary could look up, as did her Son ; in 
whom the Son of God found a companion as well as 
a guardian, whose death broke the mould which had 
fashioned him. 

2. In the same manner of reasoning it would have 
seemed more fitting for the church to have chosen a 
great pope, the first one perhaps, or his companion, 
St. Paul, for the oJQ&ce of universal patron. No doc- 
tor ever had the right which St. Paul might have 
claimed to the honor and the title ; because the might- 
iness of his faith and his intellect was such that the 
church will bear the impress of both until the end of 
time. St. John had claims also, and even St. Augus- 
tine ; yet the church passes these saints by for the 
obscure carpenter of Nazareth. The reason is evi- 
dent. The sanctity of St. Joseph matched the dig- 
nity of his office. Had not the Saviour taken the 
title of King of the Saints, his earthly guardian could 
claim it ; a statement which could hardly be made of 
any other holy soul. In the hymn of his feast the 
church declares his superiority to all others in the 
comparison and the apostrophe of the last stanza but 
one : " Post mortem reliquos mors pia consecrat, pal- 
mamque emeritos gloria suscipit : tu vivens, Superis 
par, frueris Deo, mira sorte beatior." 

m. The Thikty Yeaes. 

1. Naturally we ask what did the man do to merit 
these extraordinary honors from the church, which is 
Christian mankind. The conditions of his life fur- 



ST. JOSEPH. 81 

nish the answer, and justify tlie absence of even the 
slim record which remains to us. He was the master 
of the home which sheltered Jesus for thirty years. 
It was the w^ork of his hands, supported by his labor 
and care. It is impossible to dwell on the details of 
the home life of Joseph, without extraordinary emo- 
tion. The priests of the sanctuary are intimate with 
their Master, and carry His Sacred Body about in 
their ministrations, touch and receive It in the Mass ; 
saints have had visions of the Child, have held Him 
in their loving arms ; but what are such things to the 
privileges accorded St. Joseph? See the loving and 
continuous intimacy of the ordinary father and infant 
in a thousand homes. It is both sweet and touching, 
common as it is ; and such was the hourly intimacy 
of Joseph Avith Jesus from the moment of his birth 
until his infancy had passed. It was a small thing 
for this carpenter to converse with the angels, having 
in his possession their King and Queen. Let us 
mention it with holy reverence and reticence, but who 
shall set limits to his intimacy with the Blessed 
Trinity, having in his possession as ward One of the 
Divine Persons. In fact the holiest imagination 
pauses before this man's relationship to God. It is 
too much for us. 

2. It is perhaps as well to follow the Scripture and 
draw the veil over these intimacies, so overwhelming 
to human thought and littleness. But consider 
briefly the relations of this father and Son from the 
date of His young manhood until their separation. 
Whoever has had the privilege of witnessing father 
and son, superior in nature and attainments, grow 
old in affection for each other, ripen with the years 
6 



82 THE chaplain's sermons. 

in mutual confidence and love while increasing in 
virtue, and drawing closer to each other as the thought 
of separation grows upon them, such a one will have 
a picture of the daily union of Jesus and Joseph in 
the home of Nazareth. It seems marvellous that any- 
human being could have endured it ; still more won- 
derful that having enjoyed it for thirty years, a man 
could have remained the mere clod that St. Joseph 
remains to the Protestant world. He must have re- 
flected the Divine at the very least, as the senseless 
mirror reflects the sun. 

3. He died in the arms of his Son, and saw the 
human tears fall from Jesus' eyes, heard his sobs as 
He resigned Himself to a separation, none the less 
painful to His human nature that He was God. The 
dying man could look without fear into his Son's 
face, could accept Mary's ministrations without re- 
proach, for he had been the most faithful of guardians 
to the Mother and the Son. Perhaps his last peti- 
tion was to remain with them until the tragedy of 
Calvary had passed; no other desire disturbed his 
union with the glorious will of God. Jesus received 
his last sigh, folded his dead hands on his breast, 
followed his holy body to the grave, and wept over 
his resting-place, services He did not render to His 
Blessed Mother. And it is easy to picture the two 
mourners, in the quiet and sorrow of the days when 
Joseph was no longer with them, talking with each 
other of the hundred things which had endeared him 
to them. 

4. Without doubt his entrance into Limbo was as 
the ambassador of the Lord. From Adam no more 
distinguished soul had entered the prison of patience, 



ST. JOSEPH. 83 

and he brought with him that news which no other 
could have brought, the news of speedy deliverance. 
With what wonder and joy the holy souls of men 
heard the story of his thirty years in the presence of 
Jesus. This man had seen, and held in his arms, 
and trained the Eedeemer ; he had but just left Him 
that moment; he could describe His appearance, His 
words, His history; and prophets heard with love 
and awe the fulfilment of their own prophecies ; saints 
heard of Him Whom they had desired from the far- 
off centuries ; and the parents of the race, the weak 
guardians of Paradise, listened in dread and hope to 
the description of the two beings, Jesus and Mary, 
whose perfection restored to earth the race in its first 
perfection, while the Divinity of Jesus honored it 
beyond description, and made these guilty two the 
progenitors of a Divine Man. What must have been 
the honor, reverence, and love heaped upon Joseph 
by these millions of holy ones, when they understood 
the height of glory to which God had raised him. 

IV. His Earthly Fame. 

1. It was morally impossible that the dignity and 
worth of such a man should remain hidden from men, 
when publicity is won by mere human genius. To 
grasp the strength and proportion of his fame and 
his use to his race, compare with his the worth and 
the fame of such a character as Napoleon or Csesar, 
or their betters on honest grounds, Charlemagne and 
the Saxon Alfred. The former are but names to ex- 
cite the less noble passions; the latter are known 
only to the learned, or to the average readers, touch- 



84 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

ing actual life in almost accidental fashion. But this 
humble guardian of the Lord has his elSigy on every 
altar, in church, school, home; his character is the 
inspiration of orator, poet, artist; his name honors 
the noblest temples and other public buildings ; mil- 
lions of pure and noble hearts or of weak and repent- 
ant ones, cry out to him daily in love and petition ; 
all Christians regard him as the patron of their dying 
hours, and scarcely a faithful soul leaves the world 
without his sacred name on the lip, mingled with 
the names of Jesus and Mary. If God had conferred 
on him no other honor, this last would have been 
enough. Of all the great and good souls that have 
honored the earth with their virtues not one outside 
of the Holy Family has ever received so universal, so 
spontaneous a tribute of affection and esteem from 
the human race. The career of Napoleon living or 
dying and his kind is a mere stench to the human 
race; compared with the career of St. Joseph, the 
history of such leaders looks like a plague, to be re- 
membered only with awe and horror, to be prayed 
against, as a crime against the human race. 

2. Yet brilliant as is the place now held in public 
estimation by the carpenter of Nazareth, it has not 
reached its maturity. "Joseph is a growing son." 
It is more than probable that the Holy Family lives 
in heaven the same life which it lived on earth, and 
that the Mother and her Spouse rejoice in that com- 
pleteness of nature which will be secured to all the 
just after the resurrection. It is not a doctrine of the 
church, but it is a favorite teaching with spiritual 
writers. The feast of the Assumption implicitly 
teaches that the Blessed Mother enjoys the privilege; 



ST. JOSEPH. 85 

it seems fitting that the third member of the Nazareth 
household should be similarly honored. 

What a lesson is this humble life of a Judean car- 
penter to the proud world. The honest and dishon- 
est strivings of its greatest geniuses have not secured 
so beautiful, so true, so glorious, so enduring a fame 
as this obscure man, who lifted not his finger to se- 
cure any earthly glory. What a consolation his 
career must be to the common man, who has no hope 
of fame, or of being remembered any longer than his 
gravestone carries his epitaph, nor as long. To be 
remembered by God is the thing ; to be blessed for 
years by the grateful prayers and thoughts of poor 
souls whom we have helped in body or soul is greater 
fame than the miserable glory which attaches to the 
names of Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon. The 
particular force of St. Joseph's life is that he was a 
faithful father, the model of fathers. Nothing less 
than his devotion to his family, his single-minded- 
ness in their regard, his lofty standard of duty, his 
personal sanctity, will secure to the parent, not only 
the good sons of time but the immortal sons of 
eternity. 



ZU feenfen ^edson. 



What wilt thou that I do to thee? And he said, Lord, that 1 may 
see. — Lukexmi. 4.1 

OUTLINE. 

1. The celebration of Lent is a most efifective and honest way to a right 

understanding of the tragedy of Calvary. 
8. Fifty years ago Lent was ridiculed in this country as a superstition, 

while to-day it is held in respect. 

3. To whom we are indebted for this change of public sentiment. 

4. The best rule for the observance of Lent is to cut ourselves off from 

human aflfairs as far as we can. 

5. If this seems difficult, picture the summary fashion in which sickness 

would remove them from our interest. 

6. Examine in retirement the road of life so far travelled, and that part 

which is yet to come. 

7. Cry out with the blind beggar for the mercy of light in the darkness of 

our souls. 

8. How much we need light is plain from our confident belief that we 

already see plainly. 

9. Lent is a happy time in which to ask and receive the light of the Holy 

Spirit. 

1. Lent. 

1. There is a touching fitness in the gospel selected 
for our edification on the Sunday before Lent. The 
Catholic world is about to enter on its preparation 
for the Passion of the Lord, to leave secular affairs 
for the space of forty days and join Our Saviour in 
the desert, to fit itself for a right understanding of its 
own destiny, and a right appreciation of the sublime 
tragedy which nailed the fairest flower of the human 
race to a cross. The wisdom of the church gives us 
this selection from the words and deeds of the Mas- 
ter, that we may catch the true meaning of the task 



THE LENTEN SEASON. 87 

we are to perform. The celebration of Lent is a most 
effective and honest way to a right understanding of 
the tragedy of Calvary. In silence and humiliation, 
in sackcloth, ashes, and hunger, with all pleasures of 
sense laid aside, and the cares of life put away, be- 
wailing the blindness which sent our King to a 
shameful death, the sins which made it possible, we 
travel slowly to the scene of our shame, — Calvary. 
The Gospel invites us. " Behold, we go up to Jeru- 
salem, and all things that are written by the prophets 
concering the Son of Man shall be accomplished." 
The spirit of the blind man should be ours : " Jesus, 
Son of David, have mercy on me." His pitiful peti- 
tion is the true prayer for Lent : " Lord, that I may 
see." The blindness of men is something to wonder 
at. We see it in our indifference to the tragedy of 
the Cross, which never comes home to us as a crime 
in which we have a share, or a disgrace which rests 
on our race. 

2. Li the civilized world to-day the Catholic body 
alone celebrates the Lenten season w4th spirit and 
thoroughness ; for it alone is convinced to a degree of 
the necessity of penance. It alone seems to under- 
stand rightly the words of Christ: "Unless ye do 
penance, ye shall all likewise perish." It alone 
seems to have kept a right view of that crime against 
God and man perpetrated on Calvary. In the early 
days of the faith, the celebration of Lent was without 
system ; each locality had its days of fast previous to 
the day of the crucifixion, and many had the com- 
memoration of the Master's fast of forty days. Lit- 
tle by little, as the church grew, uniformity was 
introduced, and soon the entire Christian world was 



88 THE chaplain's sermons. 

in possession of the season of Lent as it is celebrated 
to-day. None disputed its fitness or its advantages 
until the Lutheran revolt, which, rejecting a few 
truths at the beginning, is about to end by rejecting 
all. In particular the public fasts and abstinences of 
the church became in time an object of popular ridi- 
cule, and even an argument against the church. 
Fifty years ago in this country the celebration of 
Lent was looked upon as a superstition. Yet what a 
change in public opinion at this date. The faithful 
Catholic millions, pluckily adhering to their Lenten 
practices, have brought the social and business world 
to respect their motives, and to make room for their 
celebration of Lent. It is well known now that the 
business world feels the presence of Lent as a time 
in which inventories can be made; the places of 
amusement reduce expenses to meet the falling off in 
attendance, fashionable society retires into a semi- 
obscurity, a half-retirement out of respect for the 
season ; and the nation, in spite of itself, stands aside 
from its everlasting pursuit of money and pleasure, 
while the Catholic is at his prayers and fastings. 

3. Strangely enough this Lenten period of silence, 
rest, thoughtfulness, and abstinence has received the 
unqualified approval of physicians without any relig- 
ious belief. They see in it a chance of rest for minds 
and bodies worn out with surfeiting, with emotion 
and passion, which will not benefit by treatment as 
long as they are subjected to the strain of fast living. 
These physicians encourage their Catholic patients 
to take advantage of Lent for its physical benefits, 
and praise the season for their non-Catholic patients, 
advising them also to imitate its withdrawal from 



THE LENTEN SEASON. 89 

secular affairs. Thus approved by scientists, ac- 
cepted by the fashionable world, and acknowledged 
by business circles, Lent has come to be an immense 
social influence in this country. To whom are we 
indebted for this surprising change in public senti- 
ment? Surely not to the cool-faithed Catholics, who 
are ever paring the practices and doctrines of the 
faith to suit the circumstances of the hour, and the 
prejudices of their non-Catholic friends ; nor yet to 
the Catholics who become invalids of the most des- 
perate sort just before Lent; nor to the many who 
pass through the season with such thought of its 
spirit and as great knowledge of its aim as Hotten- 
tots? Rather are we indebted, for the present na- 
tional deference to Lent, to the faitliful souls of every 
grade of life, who did their dutj^ as it came to them 
with the one thought of honoring the Master by 
obedience to His church. 

11. The Way to Observe Lent. 

1. In order to use this holy season to advantage 
bear in mind that it has been instituted to help us 
toward that freedom from the slavery of the body 
which too great an interest in business, money-mak- 
ing, pleasure, comfort, no matter how lawful, is sure 
to impose. We are born for a spiritual world, as 
well as for this, and the heavenly life is the better. 
Li Lent we cut ourselves loose from this world, and 
whether we are able to fast and abstain, this cutting 
off is possible and necessary. It makes the body 
once more the slave where for ten months it has 
played the master. It gives us the right view of 



90 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

things ; and we see ourselves in some measure as we 
shall see ourselves after death when this world will 
be far from us. The best rule for the observance of 
Lent is, therefore, to cut ourselves off from human 
affairs as far as we can; to transact them as if they 
were the affairs of a stranger, or as if fatal sickness 
had attacked us, and in a few months they would be 
out of our hands altogether, as one day they will 
surely be. 

2. If this seems difficult either to the will or the 
imagination, picture to yourself the manner in which 
these same affairs would worry along while a serious 
illness confined you for months to the sick-room. 
We are all apt to imagine that the world, at least our 
corner of it, could not get along without our super- 
vision ; a mere glance at the children, the estates of 
persons dead a few years, or still on the sick list, 
makes plain our conceit. In the same way we are 
given to fancying that fast and abstinence are impos- 
sible for us ; another glance at the slender eating of 
the poor and their vigorous health, at the good results 
of well-ruled abstinence in bodies which have ceased 
to grow, will show our mean attempts at self-decep- 
tion, the one art in which man is a master without 
previous training. 

3. Yet if it be true that fasting and abstinence are 
impossible for us, the spirit of Lent is a thing to 
be observed, and penance is a duty which cannot be 
shirked. There are two penances which ought to be 
specially cultivated in Lent. The first is a more 
than ordinary devotion to the duties of our state. To 
watch and examine ourselves as to the spirit and 
manner in which we are doing things that have be- 



THE LENTEN SEASON. 91 

come a second nature to us, perhaps, is a task of 
magnitude, and of penitential merit; to stand aside 
like a curious observer determined to find fault, never 
to approve, and in that spirit to note each move of 
mind and will, each resulting act; to question mo- 
tives, to denounce flattery to ourselves by ourselves : 
what a true and penitential occupation for Lent! 
With our actions and intentions brought daily before 
the bar of judgment, as they will surely one day be, 
what discoveries of faithless or foolish parents would 
result, of mean children, who thought themselves 
models of filial love, of cold Catholics who mistook 
lack of faith for equanimity of feeling, of vicious dis- 
positions which thought themselves honorably severe, 
of malice which talked like charity, of hypocrisy 
cloaked by respectability. 

4. The second penance is to examine that road 
which so far we have travelled between birth and 
judgment, and in particular to study the portion 
which is still ahead. Eecall the souls that began the 
journey with us. The man of twenty can easily find 
some sorrowful tragedies among them ; the jail has 
closed on one or two, and everlasting shame ; unhon- 
ored and sinful exit from this world has disgraced 
another; a third has fallen from faith, or from its 
practice ; many have gone home in peace and virtue ; 
yet he is still here, healthy, happy, virtuous, with a 
career of honor ahead, no stain upon his name or his 
soul. How much longer will these advantages re- 
main to him? Who can tell, when the most prosper- 
ous, the most virtuous suddenly tumble into rain of 
one kind or another ! 



93 THE CHAPLAIN *S SERMONS. 

III. The Blind Beggak. 

1. The ease with which we sin, the difficulty with 
which we come to a real repentance, alike spring 
from unconsciousness of the misery sin brings upon 
the soul. We cannot cry out with the anguish of the 
blind beggar. Son of David, have mercy on us. He 
knew his own wretchedness, he had suffered it for a 
lifetime, and the whole world could not silence the 
cry for mercy that rose like a tornado from his heart, 
when he found himself so close to the One Being able 
and willing to remove or lighten human misery. The 
respectable people nearest him appealed to his hu- 
man respect to force him to be silent, and yet he only 
cried out the more; had Rome's emperor at the head 
of an army ordered him to silence he would still have 
cried out for pity, so deep was the sense of his own 
misery in his heart. 

The Son of God made way for him, and granted 
the most touching and pitiful petition ever presented 
to Him: "Lord, that I may see." Look into the 
depths of that long-nursed anguish, sadder even than 
the physical darkness in which the beggar had sat 
for years, and hear in that cry for mercy and light the 
great cry that has gone up from the nations sitting 
in darkness since man appeared on the earth. Its 
strength and yearning are beyond description. It 
was easy for the bystanders to chide his insistence; 
they had never been blind. If we could feel our 
blindness as he felt his, what a cry for mercy would 
reach the Master, and how quickly He would respond 
to the appeal. Alas ! we too often think our blind- 
ness sound sight, and instead of prayer for light, we 



THE LENTEN SEASON. 93 

have only congratulations for ourselves on our clear 
seeing, or foolish praise for God that such sight is 
His gift! 

2. In this very gospel we have a striking example 
of the blindness of men. The disciples, as the inti- 
mates of the Saviour, thought that little was wanting to 
them in the way of comprehending Him. They could 
even reproach the beggar that he troubled the Lord 
for sight instead of being content with his condition 
as they were. They knew it all; yet only a short 
time previous they had been guilt^^ of a blindness 
which to us appears culpable. When the Saviour 
announced to them His coming passion, and in the 
plainest language, fit for infants, told them that He 
was to be crucified and after His death to rise again, 
no understanding of the facts reached them, " And 
they understood none of these things." Yet in their 
conceit they could reprove the insistent beggar. If 
these princes of the earth and of heaven, these pupils 
of Christ, His dear associates on the mission, could 
be so blind, what cannot happen to ourselves? What 
may not be the depths of that darkness in which we 
have hidden ourselves from ourselves, while stupidly 
calling it light? 

3. We see this blindness all about us. Here is an 
industrious and sober man, who drinks without 
drunkenness enough of his small wages to stint the 
house in necessities, to deprive the children of decent 
clothing, to force them to work too early in life. 
Here is a rich man who gives to the poor one-tenth 
of what he is able and ought to give, and congratu- 
lates himself on his generosity. Here is a youth who 
misses no external law of the church, and is eaten up 



94 THE chaplain's sermons. 

by the dry rot of impurity because dry rot is thought 
little of in society; it is cancer which is dreaded. 
This woman frequents the sacraments and misses no 
chance to spread the tale which injures a reputation ; 
another is so bent on securing a footing in society for 
her boys and girls as to be utterly unaware they are 
losing faith and virtue in that society. And these 
instances might be multiplied without end. The 
power of self-deception belonging to man is very 
great. Hence the fitness of that petition for Lent : 
"Lord, that I may see." 



®CAt$. 



It is appointed unto men once to die. — Heb. ix. 27. 

By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death. — Rom. 



OUTLINE. 

1. The human race forever wrestles with the mysterious problem of death. 

2. The pagan thinks it solved when he has schooled himself to accept 

death with indifference. 

3. Yet this solution brings him no alleviation of the anguish of death. 

4. Sinners are compelled to create their own philosophy of death. 

5. But it is never as dignified or consistent as the pagan's. 

6. In the agony of death none so religious in form as the sinner. 

7. The true and devout Christian accepts death as the punishment of sin. 

8. Serene he treads the path to death because Jesus and the saints trod it 

before him. 

9. For him the light of the resurrection shines ever on the grave. 

I. The Pkoblem of Death. 

1. Man lias some understanding of the problem of 
life. The work in which he is engaged, the hopes 
and ambitions which he cherishes, the pleasant rela- 
tions with neighbors, friends, and kinsfolk are tangi- 
ble and comprehensible things ; but death, the cessa- 
tion of work, of hope and ambition, of all relationship 
with earth, has been a problem from the beginning, 
and for the natural man remains a mystery to the 
end. Men have argued over its solution for centuries, 
have adored it, flouted it, reverenced and mocked it 
by turns ; they have tried to destroy it by such doc- 
trines as transmigration, or to let it alone as an in- 
different fact of nature like the change of seasons ; 
they have tried to take it gayly like the Epicureans, 

95 



96 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

making it tlie excuse for greater merriment in life ; or 
they have endeavored with the modern scientists to 
explain it as one of nature's happy processes, to 
which we should submit resignedly as to the winter. 
But all these wandering moods have not solved the 
mystery of death, or brought consolation and resig- 
nation to a single creature in the presence of the 
dread messenger. Men still wrestle with the prob- 
lem, and continue to shape their lives or their plans 
with the dread fact in view. In spite of philosophers 
the problem remains a problem still. "Have the 
gates of death been opened to thee, and hast thou 
seen the darksome doors?" Job xxxviii. 

2. In our day the cultured pagan has made a vigor- 
ous attempt to treat it as a natural and poetic fact, 
which should have no other influence on our lives 
than that which urges us to keep our estates in order 
for our heirs. He reasons that as man knows noth- 
ing about it after centuries of argument and research, 
therefore there is nothing to be learned of its nature ; 
that since God sent us into the world without our own 
knowledge or consent, He will discharge us from it in 
the same way ; that it is not for us to worry over 
what does not concern us. He denounces the preach- 
ers of death's sorrows as disturbers of man's happi- 
ness, making death a bitter dolor where it should 
be a passing into rest ; he asks ironically where these 
preachers got their information as to judgment and 
the account to be rendered of this life ; and he con- 
veniently forgets all that has been taught of that ac- 
count and the life hereafter by the sages of human 
history. Admitting the fact of death he teaches that 
life should be made all the more beautiful because of 



DEATH. 97 

the fact, that dying should be done graciously and 
bravely, "like one who wraps the drapery of his 
couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams," 
that the hobgoblins of sin and judgment should not 
be permitted to disturb the death-moment, that roses 
should be scattered over the dead body and over the 
grave, gracious marbles should mark the resting- 
place, and sweet memories of the loved and lost 
should linger in the memory forever. 

3. This philosophy makes beautiful reading, but 
it can be doubted if it ever eased one pang of the dy- 
ing moment for either philosopher or slave. Even 
without the dread of judgment and hell, death re- 
mains a dreadful thing. It is not the agony of dying 
which affrights the soul, nor the farewell to fortune, 
nor the entrance to corruption ; but rather the cessa- 
tion of life, the eternal separation from all we loved, 
and the surrender of every hope and ambition that so 
long fed the fires of the heart. The pagan cannot 
hide this great anguish of separation from our own 
personality under rhetoric and roses, marbles and 
memories. If he has loved deeply, the death of his 
beloved reduces him to the most piteous despair, and 
resignation is beyond him. Memory mocks him, for 
that which he loved is extinct, a mere handful of 
ashes, which it seems folly to keep in the heart. 
" Suffer me, therefore, that I may lament my sorrow 
a little, before I go and return no more, to a land 
that is dark and covered with the mist of death ; a 
land of misery and darkness where the shadow of 
death, and no order, but everlasting horror dwelleth." 
— Job X. 

" O Death ! how bitter is the remembrance of thee 
1 



98 THE chaplain's sermons. 

to a man that hath peace in his possessions." — Ec- 
clus. xli. 

II.— Sinners and Death. 

1. For Christians who have taken to a life of sin 
death has no secrets, since they are acquainted with 
the teachings of the Church on the end of man's 
career in this world. However, as man must render 
to himself regularly an account of the use he is mak- 
ing of life, sinners are compelled to have a philos- 
ophy of death even as the pagan's, which will explain 
and condone their constant violation of the laws of 
God. They still believe, and are not willing to lose 
their faith ; they are certain of the punishment of sin, 
of judgment, purgatory, and hell ; and the grace of 
fear still holds their hearts, and often poisons the 
pleasure for which they have risked their happiness 
hereafter, their peace of mind here. They may have 
sunk so low, may have acquired so strong an attach- 
ment to sin, as to wish that death were the end of all 
things for them, and that faith, religion, command- 
ments had never existed for men. Yet in spite of 
the paralysis which they have brought on the soul, 
they still believe in the life to come, still hope to give 
up sin one day when the appetite for it has died out. 
They forget the wise man's saying: "Kemember that 
death is not slow." — Ecclus. xiv. 

2. The pagan endeavors to forget death; the be- 
lieving sinner plans to cheat the law and its oj6&cers 
at the last moment. He counts first on the vigor of 
his constitution to carry him into old age, and second 
on the placidity of his passions when youth and ma- 
turity have departed. He supposes that in the de- 



DEATH. 99 

cline of life his temper will incline to religion and 
its duties, and that he will have time to make a long 
preparation. He pleads that the passions of j^outh 
are so strong as to require an outlet, and as long as 
he does wrong to no man that in some way indul- 
gence is lawful to him. He soothes his loose con- 
science with the promise that he will soon repent, or 
wdth regular attendance at Mass, or with the wearing 
of a scapular or the recitation of the rosary or the 
giving of generous alms. At times the grace of fear 
becomes so insistent that these and similar sedatives 
refuse to control conscience, and he is forced to make 
a mission, or to make a confession which results in 
good behavior for a brief time. Then he returns to 
his sins again. His philosophy is not as consistent, 
nor as admirable as the pagan's, but it serves sinners 
for many years, as a powerful opiate serves unfor- 
tunates dying from slow and painful disease. 

3. When death comes to the pagan he makes a bold 
and often a successful attempt to lie down with dignity 
to cheerful dreams; while the sinner against light 
sneaks off meanl}^ like a " quarrj^-slave at night, 
scourged to his dungeon." He is like one rushed 
out to trial and execution before his affairs can be 
settled, his counsel summoned, his witnesses secured, 
his case prepared. He hopes against hope for that 
luck which, in spite of the decree of physicians, will 
return him to active life once more ; he clings to the 
priest, to the crucifix, to the scapular, to the lighted 
candle, to the holy water, no aged devotee being able 
to surpass his devotion to these little planks, which 
relieve his ever-increasing sensation of drowning. 
But his devotion has no heart in it, and is only the 



100 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

expression of liis despair. There may be some 
dignity in the death of a pagan ; there seems to be 
only meanness in the death of a sinner, unless grace 
has flowed in upon his soul in a flood, and floated him 
above the meanness of his life. " By what things a 
man sinneth, by the same also he is tormented." — 
Wis. xi. 

III. — The Sanctified and Death. 

1. The vagaries of both pagan and sinner in this 
matter spring from their poor understanding of the 
mystery of death, which only the true Christian com- 
prehends rightly, and gives its proper place in his 
philosophy of life. He has it from the Holy Spirit 
that death is the punishment of sin ; for by sin came 
death into the world. Therefore he accepts it as a 
punishment, which falls inexorably on every son of 
Adam, sinner and saint alike. All must accept its 
anguish, as did Christ and His holy ones, and thereby 
pay off a portion of the debt of justice, which Christ 
by His death paid wholly. He holds that of all life's 
days the last is the most imj)ortant, as in the race- 
course the goal takes first place in the minds of 
athletes and spectators. In one respect life is a train- 
ing for death, that the soul may pass the finishing- 
post with its every power in vigorous action. Like 
a practical philosopher he believes in preparing first 
and always for that which must be ; therefore death 
is a well-considered element in all his daily calcula- 
tions. Nor is it in consequence a spectre at the feast, 
a shadow on life's pathway; for it looms before him 
grand and majestic, the portal to the eternal life, the 
gloom of its earthward side softened by the light of 



DEATH. 101 

heaven. Hence when life has honored him with its 
best gifts, and has little more to give, a certain indif- 
ference to living longer, a noble disregard of our 
puny, physical life takes possession of him, and he 
finds himself longing, as do the saints always, for the 
true life of heaven. " One day in thy courts is above 
a thousand." — Psalm Ixxxiii. 

2. At the same time he does not try to hide under 
roses and rhythms the terrors of death. The man of 
faith is always acutely alive to the ordeal which he 
must undergo in his last moments, too sensitive per- 
haps to its anguish. The very strength of his body 
in health reminds how feeble, how tormented, how 
painful that body will become in the grasp of fatal 
disease ; how fever will consume it, and pain oppress 
it; how dreadful will become the bed so eagerly 
sought in health after the day's labors. He is chilled 
now at the thought of the grave and its painful cor- 
ruption, though his body will be insensible to the 
worm. His sins, long repented of, trouble him, as 
he catches sight of the majesty of an offended God. 
The judgment has many terrors for him, because it 
has terrified the spotless saints after their lives of 
labor and deaths of love. More than all, the separa- 
tion from his beloved, the parting with those who are 
far dearer than life, will be a second death to him. 
It drew bitter tears and groans from the Son of God, 
that separation from the best of life ; why should it 
not rend the heart of the ordinary Christian dying? 
These and a hundred other sorrows often overpower 
for the moment the most fervent and innocent soul. 
" My tongue hath cleaved to my jaws, and Thou hast 
brought me down into the dust of death. — Ps. xxi. 



102 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

3. With the just man the consolations of faith finally 
outweigh the apprehensions of the mind. He recalls 
how faithfully he has striven to walk in the way of 
the commandments, to prepare himself by a pure and 
devoted life for the final ordeal. How often has he 
meditated on death, accepted its pains beforehand 
with resignation to the Divine will, and poured out 
his petitions for fidelity to the end. "Remember 
thy last end and thou wilt never sin," has been his 
motto. He is consoled by recalling that Jesus did 
not spare Himself the bitter journey to the grave by 
way of awful Calvary, that tender martyrs followed 
their Lord by the road of fire, of torture, of the 
bloody arena, that the glorious bodies of the saints 
underwent the humiliations of the grave in crumbling 
into dust, and that the God, in whose hands are all 
these things, will w^atch each detail, as He watches 
the fall of a sparrow. " Are not ye of much more 
value than they?" He knows that a splendid strength 
will be conferred upon him by the sacraments of the 
last hour ; the Son of God HimseK will feed him, the 
priest will absolve him, the church load him with her 
favors; the last oiling, the Sacrament of Extreme 
Unction, will warm the chilling heart and strengthen 
the faltering limbs for the journey through the valley 
of shadows ; and at his side will walk his angel, his 
patrons, to cheer the lonely way. Though it is the 
Judge he meets at the great tribunal, he recalls that 
in life He had ever been his friend, bound to him by 
many ties, but most of all by the tried service he had 
rendered to His Master on many occasions. " I was 
hungry and ye fed me, naked and ye clothed Me." 
That painful separation from his beloved on earth is 



DEATH. 103 

only for a short time ; and if he cannot repress his 
anguish and fear that they will not do as well without 
him, nor be as faithful to God, his trust in His Mas- 
ter quells both fear and anguish. Finally, he knows 
that the Church will lay his body to rest with rever- 
ence as once the temple of the Holy Ghost, and guard 
it with care for the resurrection. It will be laid 
away with honor, and its name held in benediction. 
With all these beautiful consolations in his mind, 
how can the death of the Christian be other than it 
is, simple, sweet, enlightened, pathetic, and hopeful? 
The pagan stoic fails like a lamp extinguished or 
drops with the dumb resignation of a noble animal 
struck by a blow he cannot understand nor resist; 
the Christian departs like another Columbus into the 
great unknown, confident of finding another and more 
glorious world. The dawn of an eternal day sheds 
its light on his paling face, and if we who survive 
must weep, it is because the doors of death have 
shut him from our human sight forever, and to see 
him again we must travel the road b}^ which he de- 
parted. But the light of the resurrection shines ever 
on his grave. " O Death, where is thy victory ! O 
Death, where is thy sting !" — 1 Cor. xv. 55. 



tU itMf Recount. 



But I say unto you, that every idle word tJiat men shall speak, they 
shall render an account for it in the day of judgment.— Matt, 
ni. 36. 

OUTLINE. 

1. There should be no exaggeration in descriptions of a fact so solemn 

and inevitable as the judgment. 

2. In that moment we shall meet our souls, as it were for the first time. 

3. The personages of the scene alone are suflBcient to fill us with reverence 

and dread. 

4. Yet they do not constitute the chief dread of judgment, which is that 

now we are to get justice done us. 

5. To understand this more clearly, picture Augustine and Napoleon at 

judgment. 

6. The judgment-hour ought to be the home-coming of sons, whereas it is 

too often the trial of mean malefactors. 

7. The world always ridicules the doctrine of the final account. 

8. But in spite of its ridicule men continue to hope and believe in a final 

balancing of the innumerable and insolent injustices of this world. 

9. How we may use this doctrine to the best advantage. 



I. — The Judgment Alone Teerible. 

1. CoMPAEED with sickness and death, the last ac- 
count which man must render of himself to God has 
superior terrors ; yet sickness is painful, to be in its 
fatal grasp without hope of escape rends the heart, 
and death, cessation, departure is the dread of na- 
ture ; still, the thought of passing before the throne 
for sentence surpasses in anguish many sicknesses, 
many deaths. This is the moment chosen by God to 
justify Himself to man for the mystery which has 
surrounded His providence in the world, and to se- 
cure man's assent to the decision of the Judge in 

104 



THE FINAL ACCOUNT. 105 

man's own case. It is the marvel of this judgment 
that man himself accepts the sentence as just. No 
matter how stupid in life, at his own trial he enjoys 
the wit of the immortals, and can see and ratify the 
conclusions of his own life as they appear at this 
moment. Believers, therefore, need every encourage- 
ment in descriptions of this tremendous event, so 
certain, so perfect, so irrevocable. Exaggeration, 
inference, word-painting are mostly uncalled for ; be- 
cause when the least has been said, which the words 
of the Master authorize and the teachings of the 
Church as well, enough has been told to disturb men 
seriously. Cardinal Newman did us inestimable ser- 
vice when he wrote his consoling "Dream of Geron- 
tius," a true antidote for the horrifying descriptions 
of the judgment so often indulged in by the impru- 
dent. 

2. At the same time there should be no minimizing 
of the fact itself. Sickness, death, and judgment are 
made bearable to the just and the penitent by the 
grace of God, and they can look with holy trust upon 
the approach of these trials. No human being can 
escape them ; in judgment we must answer for our 
use of the talents intrusted to us ; and we have the 
declaration of Christ that we shall account even for 
our idlest words. It is well for us to know without 
excess or diminution what we are to meet in that 
hour. A sentence is to be pronounced, and we have 
the shaping of the sentence. Therefore, in brief, the 
details of this last event will take form from the mat- 
ter of examination and the manner of it. As to the 
latter, how strange and awesome are the circum- 
stances? Just dispossessed of our earthly tenement, 



106 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

we meet for tlie first time, as it were, our own souls 
on the borders of eternity, the better part of our hu- 
man nature, yet always the least known and under- 
stood. Little in time, insignificant members of hu- 
man society, we are in a moment immortals; mean 
in our mental capacity and disposition, suddenly we 
are become generous in both ; self-deceivers while on 
earth, our candor now is simply appalling. We see 
sin, error, truth, justice naked, which in mortal life 
were constantly dressed in our prejudices; and we 
now give them their right names in love or in horror. 
3. We enter the great hall of judgment made won- 
derful by all the human glories and infamies that 
entered it ahead of us. We who trembled like slaves 
on being dragged before earthly courts stand now at 
the dread bar which passed sentence on Homer, 
Augustus, Yirgil, Peter, Augustine. The Father and 
the son meet face to face for the first time ; their re- 
lationship is evident to all in the likeness of the son 
to the Father; a likeness which shines out through 
all deformities of evil. The Blessed Trinity, Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit, holds the seat of judgment, 
and the witnesses stand in that August Presence 
ready with their testimony. They are incorruptible 
and eager ; the Angel that guarded us all our lives, 
Satan that desired us, the souls injured by our sins, 
perhaps lost through our deficiencies, that now de- 
mand compensation and justice. What need to add 
anything to this plain statement of facts. The brav- 
est and purest soul sighs with emotion at the baldest 
description of the scene. 



THE FINAL ACCOUNT. 107 



II.— We Shall Get Justice. 

1. Yet it is not the personages of judgment that 
constitute its dread. We are in constant spiritual 
communication with them during our lives ; and when 
we have put on immortality, to see them may not so 
seriously disturb us. The chief dread of that hour 
will be the fact that here we are to receive justice. 
We have ever been ready to mete it to others, we have 
cried to heaven for it many a time against our perse- 
cutors, yet it is certain we shall not be so eager for it 
in God's visible presence. We have never under- 
stood perfect justice. Our sins may have been known 
to us, and their malice atoned for by many tears and 
severe penances; but how many meditate upon the 
unseen consequences of these sins, or even dream 
that sins have consequences? The father who ne- 
glected his children, maimed their career by his fail- 
ures ; the sensualist whose graceful obscenity started 
the young upon the road of pleasure; the teacher 
whose love of ease cost many souls their faith or vir- 
tue ; the author whose gay book led many into less 
esteem for truth and purity ; all will find that many 
generations must pass before the consequences of 
their injustice have passed from the earth. We must 
suffer for these consequences; justice demands it, 
and at this tribunal justice will be satisfied. Yet it 
is mercy which we need more than justice, we count 
upon mercy to carry us beyond the danger of hell; 
but if Satan and the witnesses against us, the unfor- 
tunates who trace the source of their misfortunes to 
us, can make a clear case against us, what mercy can 



108 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

save ? "I will take a time, and I will judge jus- 
tices," is the declaration of the Spirit. 

2. To understand this better be present in mind 
at the judgment of two historical personages : Augus- 
tine and Napoleon. One was a saint, whose life at 
the beginning was more or less sinful or indifferent, 
while its maturity and close were splendid in virtue 
and services to God and man ; the other was a tre- 
mendous military genius and leader of men, over 
whom religion and principle had small influence. 
Both have left upon the world impressions which may 
never fade. Yet their greatness made their judg- 
ment only the more searching and severe. How in- 
significant were those two souls with all their genius 
beside the majesty of angelic intelligence or the power 
of Satan ! The Prince of darkness might have been 
discouraged before the magnitude of Augustine's re- 
pentance, yet he still had the years of his heresy and 
sin. In the great emperor he had a splendid case, 
which no repentance would seem to overcome; his 
personal sins, his monstrous ambition, his unneces- 
sary wars, his cruelties and his lust, the awful miser- 
ies which his career poured upon Europe. What 
height of human genius and power could match the 
far-reaching consequences of his sins? 

3. Such men have much to offer in excuse at judg- 
ment, but we have nothing. No great temptation dis- 
turbed us, no powerful allurements drew us from the 
right way. We sinned because we desired the taste 
of sin, wantonly. Judgment was not made simply to 
be a terror to us ; it was meant to be the moment of 
public acknowledgment of our fidelity. It ought 
really to be the homecoming of sons from a noble 



THE FINAL ACCOUNT. 109 

war, crowned with everlasting and bloodless honor, 
whose Captain presents them with joy to the Eternal 
King, and asks for them approval and a share in the 
great kingdom; whose scars are honorable, even 
though evidencing human weakness, the moments of 
half-yielding to the foe! Alas! what an array of 
skulkers, cowards, weaklings, traitors passes before 
that throne ; what joy to Satan as their careers are 
laid bare, what shame to the Great Captain who 
trusted and endowed them, only to pass shameful 
judgment on them now. 

III. — The Wokld Eidicules. 

1. Whatever may have been the design of God in 
establishing the seat of judgment, the busy and pleas- 
ure-loving world ridicules the doctrine, or does its 
best to diminish its significance for man. Neither 
the private nor the general judgment disturbs it 
in the pursuit of money and sin, and it meets the cry 
of the preachers and the warnings of the Saviour with 
a shrug of the shoulder, saying. These things are 
still far-off. It will not permit itself to get a clear 
impression, natural or supernatural, of the final ac- 
count. It dare not; for with the impression would 
tumble like a house of cards that fine structure of 
daily wickedness which it is forever building and 
embellishing. The world must have irresponsible 
power. It cannot bear the idea of one day account- 
ing for each atom of time and grace. Kings must 
still be gods, as they were of old, though the name of 
divinity be gone ; ministers must own standing armies 
with which to carry out their picayune policies, 



110 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

though the people starve and corruption thrives; 
financiers, as they are called, must be at liberty to 
manipulate railroads, to organize trusts, to steal the 
earth; the seducer, the swindler, the voluptuary 
would not enjoy their pursuits and rewards with the 
idea of an accounting lodged in their minds. So, the 
world acts as if no past would ever rise to meet it 
with exact details of its sins ; it boldly declares that 
in this world force, fraud, craft, money, are the true 
rulers, and God does not interfere to prevent their 
injustices, as is seen in the fact that every species of 
wrong marks the history of the nations. 

2. This scepticism no doubt weakens our faith, but 
it has not yet succeeded in destroying the belief of 
mankind in the day of settlement. No sane soul 
could stand over the corpse of John the Baptist and 
admit that the injustice of his death is to have no 
other vengeance than the luxurious career and ordi- 
nary ending permitted to Herod Antipas; or admit 
that all these mysteries of God's providence are never 
to have explanation. Such an ending to man's his- 
tory shocks reason in the mere mention. Religion 
or not, men will believe in their hearts that the devil- 
parent whose children died criminals because of him, 
the devil-king whose subjects died amid war's horrid 
miseries for his pleasure, and the whole tribe of ma- 
licious sinners will one day somewhere have meted 
out to them in generous measure every pang they 
inflicted on their victims. Justice demands it, and 
human reason approves. 

3. It is certain that the judgment has three uses : 
to vindicate God's providence to each man, to bestow 
on man true justice, to determine his reward or pun- 



THE FINAL ACCOUNT. Ill 

ishment. But these things are of eternity. Its use 
here is to teach us the importance of our own actions, 
and to set us on strict guard over them. Not a hair 
of our heads drops to the ground without the permis- 
sion and knowledge of God, who knows our most se- 
cret thoughts and actions. What an inspiration to 
the good that each minute of labor and patience is to 
be recognized by Him ; what a deterrent to willing 
sinners that every shade of intention and resolution 
in their violation of the law shall one day stand up 
to accuse them ! Sinner and saint alike will see their 
entire lives with the eye of the Divinity, as clear as a 
map through all their years, with consequences run- 
ning far into time and eternity. Both the elect and 
the condemned will stand for an instant beside the 
Judge, and with immortal intelligence look into the 
present mystery of God's dealings with men; and 
they will admit His justice, wisdom, and mercy from 
the beginning, though for one the result of life has 
been eternal condemnation. 



J5^t>en. 



But as it is written: the eye hath Twt seen, nor ear heard, nor huth 
it entered into the heart of man, what things Ood hath prepared 
for them that love him. — t Cor. ii. 9. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The civilized world is slowly dividing into two camps: the believers 

in the immortality of man, and the unbelievers. 

2. In spite of the teachings of the latter men still refuse to feel and think 

as animals. 

3. Yet many, while believing in a life to come, are entirely dominated by 

the life of this world. 

4. And the ideas of death, judgment, and hell are more potent in their 

lives than heaven. 

5. The true idea of heaven and the joys and activities of heaven. 

6. It is the perfection of the life begun here, the resurrection and renewal 

of it. 

7. The testimonies of the New Testament are very clear and consoling on 

this matter. 

8. If heaven has little or no influence on our lives, it is because we are 

not certain of its existence. 

9. Did not death so often take from us our best beloved, oiu* thoughts 

would rarely turn toward our last home. 

I. — The Crown of Life. 

1. In religious matters two hostile camps now face 
one another on the great battle-field of the world. 
On one side are the sinners and certain scientists, on 
the other the followers of Christ. The former de- 
clare their disbelief in a future career for man outside 
of this world, the sinners through self-interest, the 
scientists through gratuitous assumption. The 
Christians base their lives on the eternity of heaven 
and hell, and look to a career of perfect happiness in 
heaven with the God who made them. Grouped 
around these two camps is that great multitude of 
sincere, right-living people who know not what to be- 

113 



HEAVEN. 113 

lieve in the clamor of discussion going on around 
them. The scientists declare that there exists no evi- 
dence of an eternal world other than our own, which 
may be eternal, even if man is not ; that the ingrained 
superstition of men, and the shrewdness of selfish 
priesthoods, have joined forces to proclaim and main- 
tain a delusive and foolish hope, beautiful in concep- 
tion, and sublime in expression, but so utterly with- 
out reality as to be the source of many miseries to 
man. The sinners support the scientists with enthu- 
siasm because the existence of another world means 
eternal death to them. The Christians continue to 
teach the glory of heaven, convinced by faith and by 
reason also that the end of man's career is not in this 
world. The two camps will one day go out against 
each other in pitched battle, and not for the first 
time, as this struggle has been from the beginning. 

2. It is quite possible that God might have made 
man what the scientists think he is, simply the high- 
est form of animal life, made to enjoy the earth for 
a little time, and then like the inferior animals to be 
returned to his native dust; in which case the resem- 
blance of man to the most intelligent beast would have 
been much closer than it appears at present. Man 
would have lived and died content to be merely an 
animal. His personal comfort would have been his 
highest ambition, and, his wants and pleasures sat- 
isfied, he would hardly have worn himself out with 
mental sorrows over a condition of life possibly high- 
er than his own. Sickness and death would not 
have had such prospective terrors for him as now, and 
the parting at the grave would not sadden the last 
moments of the dying nor cast so deep a gloom over 
8 



114 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

the lives of surviving friends. The poet and the ar- 
tist and the sculptor, the architect, the statesman, 
the warrior, might have enjoyed their careers as in 
the present hour, but without so much anxiety and 
labor in the severe effort to attain eminence, and 
without bitter disappointment if only moderate suc- 
cess or absolute failure greeted their efforts. How- 
ever, in spite of the sinners and the scientists men 
continue to act as if there ought to be a life to come. 
They grieve immoderately over their sick and dead, 
instead of cultivating the happy stoicism and indiffer- 
ence of the animal ; the fire within them urges them 
on to the most heroic labors in behalf of art, com- 
merce, literature, and charity ; and when they accept 
the teachings of the scientists, it is with the apathy 
of despair ; or with a kind of madness, which secretly 
curses the fate that gave them existence without a 
motive sufficient to make life pleasurable, sickness 
and failure indifferent matters, and death the pleas- 
ant end of something worth ending. 

3. Catholics, strong in the faith of eternal life, re- 
gard these unfortunates with pitying eye. For them 
there can never be but the one camp, where Jesus is 
the Captain and heaven is the veteran's prize; and 
life always remains sweet and hopeful to them, even 
in the darkest hours, because earth is only the step- 
ping-stone to that kingdom, of whose glory there 
shall never be an end. Yet even Catholics can be 
criticised very often for the little use they make of 
their belief in heaven to comfort their weary mo- 
ments, and to lighten the burdens of life. In the 
average Christian life you will find that death, judg- 
ment, and hell play a larger part in moulding or di- 



HEAVEN. 115 

recting the soul than heaven. Men seem to be most 
quickly, if not most powerfully, influenced by fear, 
not love, though this be strongest in the long run. 
The honest life of the world, for here we are not 
speaking of sinners, too often so dominates souls, 
that the thought of heaven is repellent, since it in- 
volves the pain of separation from earthly activities. 
Success in life urges most men to put away such dis- 
agreeable thoughts as death ; but, what is stranger, it 
removes the idea of heaven as well, and men can wade 
long in suffering, in adversity, in sorrow, in bad for- 
tune, without once taking actual comfort in the sweet 
thought of heaven. It was St. Paul's great consola- 
tion in his last days that "as for the rest, there is 
laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, 
the just judge, will render to me in that day; and 
not only to me, but to them also that love his com- 
ing."— 2 Tim. iv. 

II.— Heaven as It Is. 

1. "We do not take more comfort and happiness out 
of the thought of heaven because our ideas of that 
dwelling-place of angels and saints are dry and there- 
fore unfruitful. It does not require much imagina- 
tion or wide reading to get emphatic perceptions of 
death, judgment, and hell ; we are too keen on these 
matters, and must even repress our wayward fancy 
in their regard. Heaven is all that an ideal earth 
might be, and very much more. What are the natu- 
ral desires of the innocent and high-minded of this 
world as to their own happiness? We all desire 
youth, that beautiful period when the color of life is 
so rich and strong that sorrow and separation seem 



116 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

but distant shadows; we desire health and vigor, 
that we may enjoy life, and contribute our share to 
the joy of others; we long for riches, because so 
much of material beauty can be purchased by gold, 
and because want is painful ; we yearn for lixity in 
the persons, places, things we love, for they are nec- 
essary to happiness, and to lose them means sorrow ; 
we long to remain constantly with our beloved, to 
enjoy their company, to strengthen more and more 
the bonds of love between us ; and as our souls grow 
holier there rises within us an intense longing for 
nobler circumstances than those in which we live. 

2. Does this world grant us these things? Youth 
flies with astonishing speed, and leaves us on life's 
road wrinkled, gray-headed, rheumatic, somewhat 
crabbed in temper, and utterly stripped of the vivacity 
and the illusions of youth ; death seems but a little 
ways off, and is the bitter seasoning of every banquet. 
In place of health and vigor we are reminded that the 
surplus of these is gone, and that we must husband 
what is left, if we would live to middle age. Most of 
us not only remain poor, but feel at times the cold 
shadow of actual want; it is only the few who enjoy 
sufficient incomes. The fact which causes us most 
pain and astonishment is the utter uncertainty of the 
shifty world about us ; in ten years the panorama of 
our lives changes completely ; hardly a soul we knew 
at life's start remains near us, and in twenty years 
change has not only robbed us of youth and hope and 
illusion, but has also taken the friends of childhood 
and youth, and placed us in an entirely new and more 
chilling set of circumstances. Worse yet, death and 
other fatalities have cut off from us the beloved of 



HEAVEN. 117 

our hearts, and our best past lies beneath the church- 
yard mould. If we have been fortunate, new and 
holy relationships have taken root in us to ease the 
wounds of time ; none the less are they wounds, and 
at times we must stand apart and weep to be alone in 
the world. In place of the illusions of our youth has 
come a bitter sense of the meanness of men, which 
pesters and worries us like the winged nuisances of a 
new-opened wilderness. Lying, cheating, slander- 
ing, dishonesty of all kinds, envy, hypocrisy, po- 
lite obscenity, sham, fraud, unfaith, so crowd upon 
the decent and clean that they begin to feel unclean 
themselves ; but there is no escape from the wilder- 
ness. 

3. Such are our desires, and such is the world's 
response to them. Is it not strange, then, that we 
should not turn with ardent longing to the thought of 
that heaven which is our only refuge from the world's 
meanness, the sure fulfilment of the desires which 
God has placed in our hearts? Heaven will give us 
eternal youth, health, vigor, wealth, beauty; it will 
be without change, or shadow of death and separa- 
tion ; we shall there find again our beloved, and the 
past and future shall be one with the present ; all the 
beauty of earth, intensified a thousand times and 
made eternal, will be ours. In fact, heaven means 
the resurrection and rehabilitation of the human race 
after death, except for that part of it which has been 
lost of its own wiU. The angels and saints shall live 
in a perfect society under the King of men and angels, 
and joy shall have no end. How is it, then, that with 
this splendid home awaiting us, we spend so little 
thought upon it? Simply because we are ignorant of 



118 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

the beauties of God's dwelling-place. Ignorant of 
heaven's beauty, we neither consider nor desire it. 

in. — The Divine Woed. 

1. Let us hear what the Scriptures have to say 
about heaven. Here is the description given by St. 
John in the last chapters of the Apocalypse : " And 
I John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming 
down out of heaven, from God, prepared as a bride 
adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice 
from the throne saying: Behold the tabernacle of 
God with men, and he will dwell with them. And 
they shall be his people, and God himself with them 
shall be their God. And God shall wipe all tears 
from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor 
mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, 
for the former things are passed away. . . . And he 
shewed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out 
of heaven from God, having the glory of God, and 
the light thereof was like to a precious stone, as to 
the jasper-stone, even as crystal. . . . And the build- 
ing of the wall thereof was of jasper-stone ; but the 
city itself pure gold, like to clear glass. And the 
foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with 
all manner of precious stones. . . . And the city 
hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine 
in it, for the glory of God hath enlightened it, and 
the Lamb is the lamp thereof. And the nations 
shall walk in the light of it : and the kings of the 
earth shall bring their glory and honor into it. And 
the gates thereof shall not be shut by day : for there 
shall be no night there. . . . And there shall be no 



HEAVEN. 119 

curse any more : but the throne of God and of the 
Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him. 
And they shall see his face : and his name shall be 
on their foreheads. And night shall be no more: 
and they shall not need the light of the lamp, nor 
the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall en- 
lighten them, and they shall reign for ever and ever." 
2. What can be added to this clear and shining 
testimony except the words of the Master Himself. 
" Wonder not at this, for the hour cometh wherein all 
that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son 
of God. And they that have done good things shall 
come forth unto the resurrection of life." — John v. 
28, 29. " The children of this world marry, and are 
given in marriage : but they that shall be accounted 
worthy of that world, and of the resurrection from 
the dead, shall neither be married, nor take wives. 
Neither can they die any more : for they are equal to 
the angels, and are the children of God, being the 
children of the resurrection. — Luke xx. 34-36. "In 
my Father's house there are many mansions. If not, 
I would have told you, that I go to prepare a place 
for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I 
will come again, and will take you to myself, that 
where I am, you also may be." These direct testi- 
monies from Our Lord might be multiplied beyond 
limit. What hope and joy ought they not rouse in 
our hearts ! Yet we are sceptical of the heaven in 
which we must believe. It is too beautiful, too won- 
derful to be true ; so we bury ourselves in the busi- 
ness, the physical, mental, and social joys of life, to 
distract our weary souls from the thoughts of death ; 
we pile up fortunes, grow greedy of human fame ; and 



120 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

when the moments of gloom arrive, as come they 
must to every man, no ray of heaven's glorious light 
pierces our darkness. We sicken and die, half de- 
spairing of the life to come, half hopeful, and almost 
wholly ignorant. 

3. Therefore, Christ reminds us by the death of 
our nearest and best beloved that we have an ever- 
lasting home visible to the eyes of faith, and forces 
us to look for it through the mist of our tears, when 
our hearts are breaking. We kneel at the grave 
where our treasures lie, we beat against that awful 
barrier of death, we cry out that it is impossible they 
should be gone from us forever ; and out of the depths 
of human grief rises the light of that faith which we 
have let die in our souls; and we see at last the 
brightness and truth of heaven, and its peace and 
promise heal our griefs. But why wait for life's 
tragedies to force heaven's consolations upon us? 
Why not recognize it now, this home of the blest, and 
draw from it comfort for moments of sorrow, humil- 
ity for moments of pride, strength in temptation, 
hope in despair, and joy for every instant of life. 
The world is all the sweeter, and its dark hours are 
lit up, when men remember and constantly feel that 
the greatest joy of life on earth is its continuity in 
the glorious life to come. 



(Bt^erftiBttng :Sdtfute, 



ITien shall Tie say to the wicked: Depart from Me, ye accursed, into 
everlasting fire. — Matt. xxv. JfB. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The failures met with in this life are a hint of the failures to be met 

with in eternity. 

2. Thus the existence of hell can be surmised, even if the Church had not 

declared it. 

3. But Christ did not leave us in doubt on this matter, and openly de- 

scribed for us hell and its eternity. 

4. Men have argued against its existence, or against its eternity of pain. 

5. Common-sense teaches that if men can make shipwreck of this life, 

they can do as much with the life to come. 

6. Theologians have been willing to do away with the darker features of 

hell, but have found all things against them. 

7. Lurid descriptions of this place of sorrow are useless and hurtful. 

8. The dignity of the description of hell given by Christ in the parable of 

the rich man. 

9. He Himself shows us that God and man do not lose in the home of 

eternal justice the dignity of their relationship. 

I.— The Existence of Hell. 

1. All failure in the effort to reach the essential 
and necessary saddens the heart. We have only to 
look around us to see the innumerable wrecks which 
lie upon the shore of time ; the bankrupt merchants 
whose wealth and opportunity have fled together; the 
decaying bodies which disease is bearing to the grave ; 
the dismasted souls, which no longer make any pre- 
tence of sailing to a harbor, but float with their vices 
through all grades of self-indulgence towards the reef 
waiting to pierce them. The world is full of these 
failures, which are saddest when irretrievable. They 
have missed the aims of youth and ambition, and all 

121 



122 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

know that life will offer them no other chance to re- 
establish themselves. Men accept this extinction as 
the inevitable, and if they struggle in spite of convic- 
tion, it is the struggle of despair, or of a hopeful na- 
ture that will not acknowledge defeat. It seems rea- 
sonable to infer, therefore, that as failure meets so 
many in the ordinary concerns of life, it will meet 
many at the judgment seat of God. The state of 
eternal glory is to be won by special effort on the 
part of each soul. It is not a state into which we fall 
as we fell into the world from the womb of the mother. 
" The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the 
violent bear it away." The commandments indicate 
what measures men must take to avoid failure in 
achieving the glory of heaven. " If you would enter 
into eternal life, keep the commandments." Yet the 
most ordinary observer can bear testimony that many 
souls pass years, entire lives, without keeping a com- 
mandment. 

2. Hence the existence of hell can be suspected by 
the intelligent without any special revelation. One 
has only to examine the life prisoners in our prisons 
to understand why there should be place in the next 
world for the souls who made violation of the law 
their one pursuit. For Catholics the matter is set- 
tled in the teaching of the church that there is a hell, 
and that it is eternal. The great thinkers of the 
Christian body have rarely been willing to accept the 
eternity of suffering, and have often set themselves to 
explaining probabilities of suffering being done away 
with in the course of ages. But their reasonings and 
explanations have failed to diminish the dread mys- 
tery of eternal failure. No hint of a restoration is 



EVERLASTING FAILURE. 123 

given in the scriptures. The soul which fails at the 
judgment seat, fails forever. If it cannot achieve 
glory in that last trial, there is nothing to indicate 
that the opportunity will ever again be offered it. 

3. The Saviour Himself has spoken on the mystery 
of hell with no uncertain voice. In that solemn de- 
scription of the last judgment, to be found in the 
gospel according to St. Matthew at the close of the 
25th chapter, the very details of the lost soul's des- 
tiny are plainly given, the causes of his failure to at- 
tain life eternal, the reasons for his condemnation to 
hell. Wrapped in selfishness such as marked the ca- 
reer of the wealthy Dives, these wrecked souls had no 
time but for their own sinful pleasures, they had no 
comfort for the wretched, no clothing for the naked, 
no food for the hungry, no shelter for the homeless, 
no consolation for the imprisoned; in a word, no 
charity either for others or themselves. And this is 
the condemnation of the merciful Christ who came 
to assure the world of mercy and hope: "Depart 
from me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire, which 
was prepared for the devil and his angels." There is 
no need to dwell on this sentence. It is supplemented 
by the last verse of the chapter : " And these shall go 
away into everlasting punishment, but the just into 
life eternal." — Matt. xxv. 

II.— The World against Christ. 

1. Naturally the interested deny the existence, or 
at least the more terrible features of hell. The unbe- 
liever pretends to derive an argument against religion 
from the horror with which he looks upon a God who 



124 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

could expose man to the risk of such a destiny ; a cer- 
tain sect denies that Christ ever uttered a word 
which can be interpreted as referring to an eternal 
hell; a second denies that the scriptures teach the 
eternity of punishment; and still a third cries out 
that the Church has not taught it, only a few ambi- 
tious theologians. All these statements are evidence 
of the dread with which man regards the mystery of 
hell. No doubt the theologians would be as happy 
as any others to accept arguments tending to destroy 
the terrors of hell; but the truth must be upheld 
though man suffer, for in truth alone is the safety of 
the race and the individual ; and, whether it be peas- 
ant or unlettered scientist who studies the teachings 
of Christ on this matter, common-sense must decide 
for both in the end as to the meaning of the tremen- 
dous passages in which Christ spoke of hell and its 
sufferings. 

2. If there be no hell of any kind, then in the order 
of salvation or of the spiritual life there is no such 
thing as failure, and all our analogies are at fault. A 
man can destroy the organic life of the body : why 
can he not destroy the life of the soul? The scien- 
tists teach us that there is no mercy in nature, 
whose laws are fulfilled at any cost. If a star vary a 
hair's-breadth from its appointed course the deflec- 
tion means ruin for itself and many other planets, 
probably eternal ruin, only the matter of which they 
were composed remaining in space : why then cannot 
the soul, by its deflection from the law of its exist- 
ence, arrive at the same eternal ruin? Analogies of 
course prove nothing by themselves, and it would 
never do to argue too closely from them. As a mat- 



EVERLASTING FAILURE. 125 

ter of fact, however, the materialists have accepted 
these analogies for their own guidance, and finding 
no escape from them in this question of the possibil- 
ity of eternal failure for the immortal soul, have 
dropped even speculative belief in the life to come. 
It was the best way to get out of the difficulty. For 
common-sense teaches us that if you can have abso- 
lute failure in all the known conditions of existence, 
you can have it in the life to come. When this state- 
ment of common-sense is supported by the authority 
of Christ, it becomes irresistible. 

3. In like manner are the others answered. The 
conclusions which flow from their assertions are not 
tenable. If the element of eternity be taken from the 
scriptural hell, then this life is not the only probation 
to which the soul of man is subject. He will have 
another chance in the infernal regions, where he will 
be once more instructed in his duties to God, and 
brought to such an understanding of his wicked life 
upon earth as to repent thoroughly for his sins. 
There is no hint of this second probation in the 
scriptures, and to maintain it throws all belief on this 
point into confusion. Whatever is found in the sa- 
cred writings tends only to confirm the beliefs of 
Christians since Christ ascended. It is always 
"eternal fiire," "the inextinguishable fire," "the 
worm which never dies," to which the Saviour, St. 
John, the Baptist, and the Apostles always allude. 
The separation between the just and the unjust is 
always referred to as eternal. The great teachers of 
the church have been only too willing to mitigate 
the scriptural statements on hell, but have found no 
justification for explaining away these statements.. 



126 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

Hence the final decisions of the church : that there is 
a hell ; that it is eternal ; that the lost descend into it 
at the instant of death. As to those who find no hell 
at all in their philosophy, they lack the elementary 
sense of justice. The drunkard, the brigand, the 
tyrant, the sinners who die glorying in their sins, 
after perhaps deliberate rejection of grace, are to re- 
ceive the same reward as the souls which on earth led 
lives of holiness. The mere statement shows its ab- 
surdity. 

III. — Dives. 

1. What is the nature of this place of sorrow? 
Who would dare to say ? For two thousand years the 
Infallible Church has uttered no word on the subject. 
What a pity that so many preachers have not oftener 
imitated her reticence. On the contrary, they have 
been prolific in descriptions of hell in proportion to 
the church's silence. With the confidence of men 
who have seen with their own eyes, they have de- 
scribed the tortures of the Inferno, found for them a 
sort of philosophic basis, and without art, without 
taste, without prudence, skill, or reservation, have 
pictured a hell from which reason revolts, which be- 
littles the majesty of God, and provides even the 
atheist with sound arguments against Divine good- 
ness and power. For it must be remembered— and 
it seems ridiculous even to make this remark — that in 
all things God is the loving Father of men; that His 
decrees are both merciful and just, and are carried 
out to the smallest detail in a way that offends not 
man's idea of dignity and taste and propriety. 
Hence, the pictures of children tied to red-hot pave- 



EVERLASTING FAILURE. 127 

ments, and similar tasteful descriptions, are a real 
offence against the spirit of religion, and could be as 
heartily condemned as any heretical proposition, even 
if they do not as much harm. 

2. What a model for preacher and hearer is 
Christ's own story of Dives in torment. Its simplic- 
ity, directness, mercy, and dignity put to shame the 
vulgar stories of the uncultured. What has the here- 
tic to say to the plain statement : " And the rich man 
died, and was buried in hell"? What can he say to 
that other striking declaration: "In all things be- 
tween us and you a great chaos is established, so 
that they who would pass hence to you are not able, 
neither can any one come hither thence" ? What a re- 
buke to the diabolical tortures of the eyes described 
by so many, that Dives " lifting up his eyes, when he 
was in torments, saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus 
in his bosom ;" that he could address him, crying out, 
" Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Laz- 
arus that he may dip his finger in water, and cool my 
tongue, for I am tormented in this flame." What a 
smarting reproach to the same dealers in horrors that 
Dives could offer up a petition for his brethren, favor 
for himself having been refused: "I beseech thee. 
Father, that you may send him into the home of my 
father. For I have five brethren, that he may tes- 
tify to them, lest they should come into this place of 
torments." How frequently we have heard from bad 
Christians and uneasy pagans the same appeal : " If 
one risen from the dead shall go to them, they will do 
penance;" and how thoroughly and powerfully are 
they answered in their madness : " If they wiU not 
hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be- 



128 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

lieve one risen from tlie dead." It is unnecessary to 
dwell on this story ; it is the rebuke of Christ to her- 
etic and declaimer alike, to the deceivers of men, 
and the self-deceived. 

3. The story of Dives teaches us above all things 
that God and man do not lose the dignity of nature 
and relationship even in hell, and that man accepts, 
as did Dives, his punishment as just. It shows us 
that hell is separation from God, from friend, from 
our own lofty destiny. It signifies eternal loneliness. 
It is the home of the failures, the deliberate or the 
willing failures, who made shipwreck of this life. It 
is the home of justice, which we cry out for so bit- 
terly in this world, and still more bitterly cry out 
against in the next. The sinner will get no sorrier 
fate than the indifferent — these dead souls that sin 
only by omission, and fancy their natural good- will 
is bound to land them safely, forgetting that it is 
wings, not mere good-will, which enables even a 
goose to fly. The one refraia of hell is "forever — 
never," like the refrain in Longfellow's poem. 
These two words contain the essence of hell's nature. 
Were it a balmy forest, eternity would rob it of its 
balm for those who walk its shades cut off from God, 
their race, and their destiny of glory. Were it even 
more horrible than the word-mongers have pictured 
it, yet had an end some time, its flames would become 
as cooling breezes. Since the dead will not rise again 
to preach its eternity, every believer should announce 
it on the housetops. To fear hell for what it really 
is, is to get some sense of sin ; the conviction of sin, 
sensitiveness to its foulness, means the making of a 
missionary and a saint. 



^^e (pctBBion of Christ. 

And Jesus again crying with a loud voice yielded up His Spirit. — 
Matt, xxvii. 50. 

OUTLINE. 

1. It is the shame of our race that we once condemned the most perfect of 

men to death. 

2. The mystery of His death overwhelms us by its sadness. 

3. With such difficulty do we realize that God became man, that His 

passion and death do not deeply touch us. 

4. It is only when we distinctly see Christ's human nature that His 

sorrows appeal to us. 

5. The average man leads a life of struggle and obscurity, which ends in 

the grave. 

6. The King of men led the same life, but ended it as a criminal. 

7. Yet death, which extinguishes men, raised our King to glory. 

8. Because His strength had root in the eternal life, while ours is placed 

in such things as health and riches. 

9. The struggle between the temporal and the eternal life is endless. 

10. The victims of this struggle, the lost souls of men, made the bitter- 
ness of the passion of Christ. 

I. — The Mystery of the Passion. 

1. It is the shame of our race, indelible and fright- 
ful, that we allowed to live in obscurity, and hurried 
to a judicial death of infamy the most perfect man 
the ages are to know. Having been honored by His 
glorious presence, taught by His word and example, 
led beyond death to eternal life by His love and power, 
we eternally discredited our own acumen by refusing 
to recognize Him as our King, our race by preferring 
to Him the robber Barabbas, our laws by securing 
under them His condemnation, our earthly rewards 
for success, ability, character, public service, posi- 
tion, mentality, by refusing Him any other honors 
9 129 



130 

than the rag of mockery, the crown of thorns, the 
mean sceptre, the throne of the cross, the grave of the 
stranger; and history has set its seal on our folly by 
accepting these emblems as more honorable than our 
gold and purple, which are oftener the reward of in- 
justice and crime than of true merit and holy virtue. 

2. The mystery of the Passion of Christ is that a 
God could suffer such ignominy and death. We 
stand appalled no less before the stupidity and malice 
which doomed Him to death than before His own 
consent to the deed. When we are told that He died 
to save us, we are at once conscious that our redemp- 
tion did not need so great a sacrifice to secure it. 
God could have chosen any one of a hundred ways to 
redeem us, without shedding a drop of His Son's 
blood. His Son might not have been born as man ; 
or might have led such a life as Moses, the life of a 
Divine ruler and legislator, and died in honor and 
peace. In fact, the mystery of Christ's Passion be- 
gins with His birth, that He should have become man 
at all, particularly as He foresaw His own career and 
its Calvary. There seems to be in His entire life a 
superfluity, which not only could hardly be expected 
from a God, but might even be reproached in a ruler 
of genius. It serves to deepen the mystery of His 
life and death. The unlettered and the sages stand 
in wonder before the cross and the crib. 

3. One effect of this mental confusion and perplex- 
ity is to leave us indifferent to the sorrows of Our 
Lord's heart. We are inclined to doubt, not that He 
suffered, but that He was really able to suffer. 
Therefore, His life of poverty and His Passion are a 
parable rather than a fact, from which we can learn 



THE PASSION OF CHRIST. 131 

much and even weep over it, as we do over the sor- 
rows of a hero of the stage or the novel ; but we are 
not stirred to shed such tears as wipe away our sins, 
or yet such as flow from the heart when real distress 
appeals to us. With dry-eyed wonder we read the 
descriptions of the birth in Bethlehem, of the flight 
into Egypt, of the agony in the garden, the trial, the 
crucifixion, the burial ; and we say to ourselves, how 
sorrowful this story would really be had it been the 
story of One who was only man ; but since He was 
also God— we cannot understand, and therefore we 
cannot weep. 

II.— One Explanation. 

1. This indifference to the sorrows of the Master is 
wiped out by prompt acceptance of the Church's 
teaching that He was as truly man as He was God. 
The mystery of the Passion and of His life loses half 
its difficulty when we see some of the probable rea- 
sons which sent Him into His mother's womb. He 
came upon earth as a member of the race He had cre- 
ated to teach that race how to live here and hereafter. 
He was the type and the mirror of the race. Every 
human being studying that type was to see man in 
his perfection, such as each man could attain by close 
and perfect union with God. Every human being 
looking into that mirror was to see, as it were, his 
own personality, reflected in its immortality, its 
earthly littleness and meanness, its failures, sorrows, 
and even its sins; "for these He also bore." Christ 
was to be the leader of the race, first everywhere, so 
that the foot of man should press no ground which 
had not first been trod by the holy feet of the King. 



132 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

If these three terms be kept in view — type, leader, 
mirror — it will not be difficult to get a measurable 
grasp of the meaning of His life and death, and of its 
perfect reasonableness. 

2. What is the ordinary life of the ordinary human 
being? To enter the world, to pass through and out 
of it, in obscurity ; to sweat and suffer for the means 
of living and the leisure of sickness and death; to 
endure the anguish of great appetites for which there 
is no satiety but in extinction; to encounter poverty, 
insignificance, failure, humiliation; to have visions 
of a splendid career and to learn to be content with 
merely living ; to live in the smallest of circles, to 
suffer slights and injuries, to be bruised for our sins 
and the sins of others, to die as if shoved off the 
earth by those hungry for our bread, and to be almost 
grudged the dust which covers us. The majority of 
human beings die young, poor, as obscure as the 
weeds of a swamp. Of those fitted to lead by ge- 
nius, the majority are wrecked on the shoals of dis- 
ease and sin before maturity can bring fame ; a per- 
centage struggles to the summit with clean hands and 
hearts, bent on helping their kind, and find them- 
selves on Calvary, the sport of the mob they would 
have aided. Poets die starving, philosophers rot in 
prison. What a sorrowful number enter the jails, 
criminals by law or fact, to end their lives in shame. 
In the end death stills the race, obscure and eminent 
alike, and the best feel the overwhelming sadness of 
the grave, into which must go the very emblems of 
their virtue and power. 

3. Now, which one of all these that enter into the 
world can look into the mirror, Christ, on leaving it, 



THE PASSION OF CHRIST. 133 

and say they saw themselves not? He was poor and 
obscure to the last, though a word w^ould have given 
Him the love and allegiance of every soul on earth. 
He chose for His field of labor an obscure Koman 
province, led a public life for only three years, and 
came into contact with the powers of the world only 
at the tribunal of judgment. From the material 
standpoint His career was a great failure ; He scarcely 
got a dubious mention in the public records of the 
day. His life ended where successful lives begin, at 
the age of thirty -three. He died in agony, a pauper 
and a criminal, so adjudged by the law. What soul 
that ever combined in his own person all the ills that 
life and injustice could fling at him is able to look 
into this mirror of Christ, and not see himseK re- 
flected? Here is the explanation of the career of the 
Saviour from one point of view. As no man can ac- 
cuse Him of sparing the means of salvation, so no 
man can say that his experience of sorrow surpassed 
Our Lord's. 

m.— ScoEN OF Life. 

1. All men yield to the charm and power of the 
Christ, because the more they study Him the more do 
they see themselves in Him. He satisfies the learned 
and ignorant, the rude and the refined, the geniuses 
and the mediocrities, the holy and the defiled, the in- 
nocent and the guilty ; and aU strive to make them- 
selves like Him according to their bent, even where 
they may not believe in His Divinity. And most of 
all do men see their own day of suffering in His last 
agony, while they do not see the noble scorn of life 
which marked His words and acts from first to last, 



134 THE chaplain's sermons. 

and which made His Passion a triumph, not an ex- 
tinction. We seem to understand no other life but 
this, and by giving it first place in our mind and 
heart we do violence to our nature, and aggravate the 
ills of life without increasing its satisfactions. When 
we get to regard death as the end of all things for us, 
and happy living as the sole source of happiness, 
then every bodily ill, financial loss, disappointment, 
failure, sickness, humiliation, become tragic ; and the 
longest life, the highest success, the most continuous 
luck turn into bitterness the moment the shadow of 
the grave falls upon them. 

2. Instead of finding disgrace in death, the Saviour 
seems really there to have begun His reign both on 
earth and in heaven. Calvary drew all hearts to Him 
according to His own foretelling: "And I, being 
raised, shall draw all things unto Me." Here again 
the veil is lifted in part from the mysterious Passion. 
He scorned life as much as we value it, because be- 
fore His eyes was always the true life of eternity, of 
which this is only the shadow cast by time. It was 
this which helped Him to bear all sorrows ; He would 
not permit His Divinity to deaden His Humanity ; all 
His strength came from the same sources whence any 
man may derive help in suffering. He knew that 
heaven makes compensation for all woes on earth, 
and, while accepting this earthly life as the gift of His 
Father, it was only second with Him, as it should be 
with all. Therefore He threw away even the lawful 
chances of escaping early or painful death. Caiphas 
could have been won to His side by one glance ; He- 
rod needed only the miracle he asked for to intervene 
between Him and the Jews; Pilate was favorable 



THE PASSION OF CHRIST. 135 

through his wife's appeal and his own sense of justice. 
Christ refused to encourage their aid. 

3. And how mean is our clinging to life under all 
circumstances, how thoroughly and foolishly we place 
the good things of the world before the eternal life, is 
made plain in the conduct of these three men and its 
results. They were all worldly place-hunters; life 
and its pleasures and dignities were their constant 
pursuit. Caiphas wished to rule always, Herod 
sought only pleasure, Pilate saw his career closing 
only with the highest gifts of empire. In condemning 
Jesus they thought of securing their own honor, 
whereas they earned eternal disgrace. A word in be- 
half of the Saviour that night of sorrow might have 
hurled Caiphas to ruin, but cheap would have been 
the price for the earthly immortality thereby secured ; 
Herod had the chance to atone for the murder of 
John the Baptist, and missed it for the infamy of 
mankind ; Pilate could have bought by a little Koman 
justice a name which Csesar might have envied. 
These three lost all by the fatuity which marks the 
passionate love of men for this world. 

lY.— The Endless Struggle. 

1. To-day the world has no emblems so glorious as 
the instruments of the Passion. Yet the struggle 
which made them holy, the struggle between the life 
of earth and the life of heaven, between love of self 
and love of God, between passion and faith, is with- 
out end. It began with the first parents. Calvary 
was only the most tragic of its incidents. In soci- 
ety, in the heart of man the same partisans that met 



136 

on Calvary in the darkness are forever at war for 
the supremacy. Hypocrisy, pride, sin, force, fraud, 
violence, rage for that power which crucifies inno- 
cence, holiness, helpless virtue — in a word, the life 
eternal. Because where that life is the dominant 
idea with men the beasts of the human heart lie in 
strong prisons chained ; and where it is feeble or un- 
known the human race is rent and bloody with the 
ravages of them. For these wounded souls Jesus 
wept in His Passion. Their sufferings were the 
weight of His woe in Gethsemane. He wept for them 
as a brother who sees the nature of their sufferings 
and has felt the full depths of their pain. 

2. We can turn pale and weep over mangled bodies, 
but how many can weep over the wrecks of souls, or 
understand the wounds which the soul may carry 
under a respectable body ? Only the Christ could see 
them, understand them, weep His bloody tears over 
them, and only one human being at that tragedy, 
perhaps, was able to enter His heart, and sympathize 
with His grief— His mother. With Him she might 
have seen the sad procession of the generations that 
were to come ; passing from birth to death, from cre- 
ation to judgment, across the hill of Calvary, with 
only the averted face, or the dull stare of indiffer- 
ence, or the hate of the Jews, or the laugh of frivol- 
ity, or the glare of interrupted passion, for the 
mournful form and the heavy heart of the lover of 
man. It is something for us of the faith, if in spite 
of our ignorance and weakness, the weight of the 
mystery, the painful gloom, we can murmur with the 
centurion: "Indeed, this man was the Son of God." 
— Mark xxxix. 



mi 



Blessed are they that have not seen and ham believed. — John xx. ^9. 

1 have kept the faith. — 2 Tim. iv. 7. 

But the just shall live in his faith. — JSab. xi. 4. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The mark of the true Catholic should be a deep and ever-deepening 

faith. 

2. We received the true faith in our baptism, and may deepen it daily. 

3. Yet with many advantages the faith of the past shames us. 

4. The unfaith of our time is very marked. 

5. Men remain as stubborn toward religion as the ancient Jews in face of 

the miracles at Nairn and Bethany, 

6. And to each problem of life and the soul and the future they answer: I 

do not know. 

7. How much like these unfortunates are the faithless disciples, the 

habitual sinners, and the indifferent. 

8. Contrast with them the faith of St. Paul, of the martyrs, of the devout 

in every age. 

9. To every argument which the world brings against the faith, the true 

Catholic should answer with a firm Credo. 

I.— Tbge Faith of the Canaanite. 

1. Lent is that season which the Church secures 
for her children that they may take time for thought 
and consequent resolution. For ten months of the 
year we are so busied in the cares of the world, that 
thought and purpose would drift away altogether from 
the life of the soul and the life to come, did not some 
power outside ourselves insist on a certain withdrawal 
from moneymaking and bread-winning, and an exam- 
ination of our present spiritual condition. This is 
the great advantage of Lent, and w^e should make a 
real effort to use it. First, let our thought be di- 
rected to that faith which is within us, to make sure 

137 



138 THE chaplain's sermons. 

we still possess it vitally; and then let us resolve 
from this time on to become more and more fervent 
Catholics. It may seem a superfluous resolution, for 
have we not been Catholics from our cradle? True; 
and the Apostles were followers and intimates of 
Christ for three years ; yet in the moment of His trial 
and danger, on the very night when they had boasted 
of their willingness to go to death with Him, they 
fled before the mob sent out by the Jewish leaders to 
seize Him in the garden of Gethsemane. Habitual 
sinners often boast that they will never give up the 
faith of their baptism, yet each hour of their sinful 
lives loosens another strand of it. Thought must pre- 
cede resolution, and resolution must be followed by 
steady action; without these what are mere words? 

2. The faith of Catholics in our day ought to be of 
the strongest, so carefully and happily has it been 
nurtured in them. It is a fire that burns in the veins, 
not a mere set of words dropping from the lips. We 
hear on every side the declarations of men who pro- 
claim their faith in Christ ; but they have never been 
baptized, they repeat simply what they have heard 
from their teachers, and the true faith is not in them. 
By the sacrament of Baptism the true faith in Christ 
enters the heart of the Catholic child, it is enlarged 
and confirmed by the sacrament of Confirmation, and 
a hundred thousand graces influence his soul in con- 
sequence. He shares in the graces of the sacraments 
of Penance and the Eucharist, the sacrament of Matri- 
mony has Torepared for him a holy home ; the minis- 
tration of priest, church, book, sermon, school is 
ever at his side urging to good, strengthening in 
temptation. The history of the great Church of two 



FAITH. 139 

thousand years proves to him how thoroughly God 
has worked in that Church from the beginning, and 
its present greatness amid the storms of persecution 
proves to him its vitality. In fact, it would not be 
possible to name all the encouragements which we 
have to believe over those who lived in the days of 
Christ, of the Apostles, of the early persecutions. 
Within and without each Catholic soul the faith 
burns like a heavenly flame, unquenchable while men 
are faithful to the commandments. "If you keep 
my commandments you shall abide in my love." — 
John XV. 

3. Yet with all our encouragements to strong faith, 
the faith of the gospel time shames us by its wonder- 
ful strength and fervor. The woman of Canaan puts 
a blush on the cheek of too many Catholics when they 
hear her story. Her daughter was possessed of the 
devil, and she appealed to Our Lord for a cure. 
" Who answered her not a word. And his disciples 
came and besought him, saying : Send her away, for 
she crieth after us. And he answering said : I was 
not sent but to the sheep that are lost of the house of 
Israel. But she came and adored him, saying : Lord, 
help me. Who answering said : It is not good to take 
the bread of the children, and to cast it to the dogs. 
But she said : Yea, Lord ; for the whelps also eat of 
the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters. 
Then Jesus answering said to her: O woman, great 
is thy faith : be it done to thee as thou wilt : and her 
daughter was cured from that hour." — Matt. xv. 
Three times He repulsed this faithful and believing 
mother, though that great and tender heart of His 
wept for her; and three times the faith in Him 



140 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

brought her to His feet, and won the miracle and the 
commendation. It was the same with the centurion, 
whose robust faith in the Son of God earned that 
splendid tribute from Christ : " Amen, I say to you, 
I have not found so great faith in Israel;" and whose 
sublime words, " I am not worthy that thou shouldst 
enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my 
servant shall be healed," the Church has made her 
own forever. The woman of Canaan and the Roman 
soldier had not a tithe of the advantages we possess 
to urge them to believe in Christ; yet what Catholic 
of this century could show a faith more glorious ! 

II. — The Unfaith Aeound Us. 

1. It is true that our time no longer makes it a re- 
proach to believe nothing of the life and destiny of 
the soul; and in consequence we cannot but be 
affected by the chilly atmosphere in which we live. 
Men even take a pride in announcing that they are no 
longer bound by superstitions, but live like freemen, 
that is, like animals, with no thought of the morrow. 
Faith is put down as a worn-out shackle of tyranny's 
day. Reason alone is supposed to rule in souls thus 
freed from ancient tyranny. How easy it is for men 
to forget that life becomes impossible for them and 
for society without faith of some kind. This entire 
community is built upon faith in other persons than 
ourselves. We have faith in the honesty and fidelity 
of the men who administer the government, in the 
leaders who command the army and the navy, in our 
representatives at foreign courts, though we know 
nothing about them ; we trust our lives to steamships 



FAITH. 141 

and railroads, our money to banks, our goods to cus- 
tomers; we swear bj^ the honor of our parents, the 
purity of our daughters, wives, mothers, the honesty 
of our sons ; and we are ready to spill our own blood 
or the blood of others in defence of things which we 
take upon faith, for we have no other way of taking 
them. Yet when religion appeals to this human faith 
daily in a thousand ways, sceptics will have nothing 
to do with faith in their own conscience, or faith in 
the history of the past, because it is in the interest of 
the soul. 

2. It was thus with the Jews in the time of Our 
Lord. They believed in a coming Messiah, in the 
existence of God, in the life to come, and in the judg- 
ment which preceded that life. They examined with 
care the pretensions of all teachers of the people such 
as John and Our Lord. They heard with their own 
ears the claims of the Saviour to the kingship of His 
people, and saw with their own eyes wondrous mira- 
cles. Some of them stood that day near the gate of 
the city of Nain when Jesus stopped the funeral pro- 
cession of him who was " the only son of his mother, 
and she was a widow." What bitter, unbelieving 
hearts they must have carried in their bosoms to re- 
main unaffected by the scene of the young man's re- 
turn from the dead. They saw the marble body, 
heard the commanding words which pierced the im- 
penetrable walls of death, saw life's red color run 
along the stiffened limbs and blush in the livid lip, 
and pallid cheek, sparkle in the glassy eye ; they saw 
mother and son clasped in loving embrace, and pros- 
trate adore the Lord of life and death ; they witnessed 
the terror, wonder, exaltation of the crowd ; and they 



142 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

could turn from this scene as from the raising of the 
daughter of Jairus, or of Lazarus, with only hate in 
their hearts for the Being who had come to disturb 
their self-admiration and upset their schemes of sin. 
3. The unbelievers of this day are as fortunate in 
one way as were the ancient Jews. The religion of 
Christ has won its unconquerable place in the world, 
and no man can withhold admiration for its history 
and its lofty doctrines. It is as clear to the eye of 
all men as were the miracles of Jesus to the men of 
His time. It has had its unbroken and glorious his- 
tory of nearly twenty centuries, it has proved itself 
the only power of time that could successfully cope 
with the spiritual and mental miseries of men, it has 
withstood all the attacks of malice, ignorance, and 
time, it has given men hope for despair, faith for 
doubt, and love for hate, it has brought eternity to 
the very doors ; yet the sceptic miserably shuts his 
eyes and will not see. He is beset by the most cruel 
problems, which rack his life, which he cannot avoid 
unless he ceases to think ; and to them all he has that 
brilliant response : I do not know. The savage of the 
wilderness satisfies his poor mind with some sort of 
an answer to the inquiries raging witihin him, but the 
cultured unbeliever has only the reply of the child to 
his own soul : I do not know. After centuries of ex- 
perience, study, investigation, the result is : I do not 
know ! How admirable ! How flattering to reason, 
the great judge of all the things that are ! The times 
are dry-rotten with this unfaith, and the children of 
Christ cannot but be affected by it. 



FAITH. 143 



m. — Credo, the Watchword. 

1. We see the effects of the chilly atmosphere 
which we breathe in the numbers stolen from us by 
interest, passion, and downright laziness. Because 
we are Catholics by baptism many seem to think 
that the faith within us can be lost in no manner 
whatever. They do not rank faith as a virtue like 
purity or honesty, which can be at once destroyed by 
impurity or stealing, and they do not see it dying 
by inches through their failure to keep fuel to the 
fire. They dream that as born Catholics they will 
sureh^ be believers of a kind forever. The}" forget 
that a time came to certain disciples of Christ when, 
with all the wonders they had seen and heard, faith 
in Him was no longer to be found in them, and 
"they walked no more with Him." If this thing 
happened in the green wood, what may not be feared 
in the dry? The sinner is certain he will one day 
come back to the faith he is leaving for sin. He 
must know that every sin he commits loosens his 
hold on his faith a degree, and that the habit of sin 
destroys faith entirely in a very short time; at the 
moment of return to faith, he discovers that he is 
without it, that he cannot believe, that he has not the 
strength, or desire, or longing, for that return jour- 
ney which appeared so easy to make years ago. In 
what a miserable condition are these unfortunates. 
It shows us that faith is not a coat which can be put 
on or put off at will. Without faith it is impossible 
to please God, and by it the just man lives. As the 
engineer watches the fires in his engines, as the cap- 



144 THE chaplain's sermons. 

tain studies and longs for the winds which fill his 
sails, as men cherish the fires of life, so should 
Christians keep up in their hearts that divine fire 
which is the motive power urging them on to heaven. 

2. What a splendid faith had that mighty genius 
St. Paul, who could feel and write in a hopeless 
prison the fine utterances of his epistles. The 
Church in his day was but a seed in the tremendous 
acreage of the world, his work was ended and seemed 
so very little, death was soon to embrace him; yet 
the clear eye and the strong heart of faith were no 
whit discouraged by the fogs and damps of ill-suc- 
cess and overhanging tragedy. What hearts of iron 
had the martyrs of the first ages, who could court 
death, imprisonment, exile, poverty, separation, for 
Christ, and lose no spark of the faith that burned in 
them. Their nights had no darkness, for all things 
shone in the light of Christ; though no such com- 
forts as surround us belonged to their age. What a 
dignity belongs to the humblest soul in v/hom sound 
knowledge of his destiny is mingled with a high 
regard for the precepts of the faith. He is like a 
skilful pilot sailing the narrow channels of this 
world toward the safe ocean of eternity. The nights 
may be clear or foggy, the channels treacherous, 
the weather stormy, and he has no fear. His faith 
makes all things bright as the day, and his skill car- 
ries the good ship of the soul clear of reef and shal- 
low. He has no uncertainty. His eye sees but one 
thing, his heart beats to one joy : the great ocean of 
eternal joy ahead. " But the just shall live in his 
faith." 

3. Faith, then, is the mark of the true Catholic, 



FAITH. 145 

and in resolving to be true Catholics our resolve 
means that the fire of the faith shall burn brighter 
in us. The world through its sceptics is bent on 
destroying our faith. It cannot rest easy in its un- 
belief while any human being believes. Therefore to 
all its sneers, persuasions, arguments, let us answer 
with united Credo. When it cries out, You are the 
fools of superstition, the victims of the scheming 
priest, answer Credo ; when it smiles indulgently and 
points out the absurdity of this and that doctrine, 
answer Credo ; when it displays the bribe of place or 
fortune, answer Credo ; when it comes with the sword 
and flame of persecution, let the Credo resound in 
prison, in exile, in death with the martyr's vigor. 
The world has nothing to give worth the taking in 
the place of faith. What the world gives it always 
takes back again ; and what it takes from us in ex- 
change for its rather tawdry wares is never returned. 
Thus it has often cheated the ambitious into surren- 
dering youth for dissipation, happiness for power, 
freedom for wealth; it still owns its dissipations, 
power, and wealth, but the ambitious never saw youth, 
freedom, or happiness again. For our faith it would 
give us a very genteel doubt, which is no bargain, as 
faith is of the few, while doubt can always be picked 
up cheap in any auction-room, 
10 



€^t QKnotvfebge dnb Eot>e of %tBm Christ. 

FurtJiermore 1 count all things to he hut loss, for the excellent knowl- 
edge of Jesus Christ my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of 
all things, and count them hut as dung, that I may gain Christ. — 
Phil. Hi. 8. 

OUTLINE. 

1. Faith gives the Christian insight into the heart and mind of Jesus 

Christ, 

2. Yet many Christians pass through life better informed about popular 

heroes than about their Master. 

3. They forget that each soul must see, know, and serve Him in judgment 

and eternity. 

4. The Catholic has no excuse for not knowing Him well. 

5. The Sacraments and the priesthood have their powers solely from 

Him. The external life of the Church has reference only to Him. 

6. The Eucharist, which is Christ Himself , is the very centre of the visible 

and invisible life of the Church. 

7. The result of knowing and loving Him is wisdom and love for the 

meanest. 

8. Man may not serve the world and Him, as the examples of Judas, 

Pilate, and Peter prove. 

9. How to attain true knowledge and love of Jesus Christ. 

I.— We Must Know and Loye Cheist. 

1. Americans often return from a tour of Europe 
more deeply admiring their own country for its 
happy conditions. In the same way Catholics turn 
from the sects to the Church, delighted with the order 
and certainty found in it as compared with the disor- 
der and uncertainty outside. The source of this or- 
der and certainty in the Church is the perfect faith 
of the people on the one side and the infallible guid- 
ance of the Holy Spirit on the other. Faith is that 
virtue which accepts the great truths of religion with- 
out any other demoustration than their mere state- 

146 



THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST. 147 

ment on God's authority. This faith confers upon 
man an insight into truths which are in a measure 
outside the domain of reason. He sees and compre- 
hends them. The light of heaven shines upon his 
nature, his condition, his various relationships, and 
enables him to follow, cultivate, improve them all be- 
yond what he could do by the light of reason alone. 
By faith he sees sin as a plague, death as a punish- 
ment of sin, judgment as a vindication of both God 
and man, heaven as an inheritance of love, hell as 
an inheritance of justice ; and above all he sees, learns 
to know and love Jesus Christ his Master, not merely 
by the light of history, but by the light of the Holy 
Ghost. This light so illuminates his reason, his 
will, and his heart, that he sees Jesus as His blessed 
mother saw Him, in the manger of Bethlehem, in 
the little home of Nazareth, on awful Calvary, on 
sublime Olivet. 

2. To see Christ thus is the highest result, the 
most beautiful fruit of faith. For this was faith 
given to men, that they might arrive at intimacy with 
Jesus, not through the senses, but through comdc- 
tion. All their lives long by a hundred varying im- 
pressions the children of Christ are made acquainted 
wdth Him ; lisping His holy Name in infancy, hear- 
ing His praises in home, school, and church, brought 
to Him in the Eucharist, reading of Him in many 
books, seeing everywhere in stone, on canvas, in pic- 
tured art of e\eTY sort, the story of His wonderful 
life and love. And these impressions blend into one 
overwhelming conviction by the power of the Holy 
Ghost working upon willing and pure souls, until 
His disciples come to know Jesus even as His mother 



148 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

knew Him after thirty years of the intimacy of Naza- 
reth. Alas ! how few seem to care for this wonder- 
ful, this consoling knowledge and love of Jesus 
Christ ! Even the ordinary good can pass through 
life without such acquaintance with Him as they 
have with their least considered neighbors. A great 
body of Christians always stand like the cattle in the 
pastures, stupidly unable to distinguish their master 
from any stranger that passes on the road. The 
sinners put their sins about their understanding like 
a fog, the good put their prejudices, the indifferent 
their laziness, lest they may see and know their Di- 
vine Master. The popular heroes receive more atten- 
tion, arouse a livelier interest in these people, than 
the Son of God. Such a creature as Napoleon stim- 
ulates their fancy, while the Christ seems to dull it. 
The old, old failing of human nature! "I have 
brought up children and exalted them: but they 
have despised me. The ox knoweth his owner, and 
the ass his master's crib: but Israel hath not known 
me, and my people hath not understood. " — Isa. i. 

3. Yet the day comes at last when we can no longer 
ignore His claims, and when the knowledge we have 
avoided so assiduously is forced upon us to our sor- 
row and shame. We pass to our judgment, where 
we shall see Him as He is, and see ourselves in our 
folly. At the judgment seat we shall learn to know 
Him in the twinkling of an eye, not as our beloved 
Master but as our Judge ; we shall see Him as the 
Avenger, not as the Father ; we shall serve Him, but 
it will hardly be with love. This thought ought to 
find consideration with the lazy and the careless, if 
not with the sinners, who are too much in love with 



THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST. 149 

sin to regard any terror of the future. Our whole 
training as Catholics has but one aim : to bring us 
to the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ. We 
have but to move with the great current of the 
Church's life to acquire almost without effort this 
love and knowledge. What supreme folly to wait for 
that last moment to acquire intimacy with our one 
Friend ; until we are actually standing in His visible 
presence. 

II.— How TO Know and Loye Christ. 

1. It sounds strangely to hear an intelligent and 
mature Catholic ask how he shall proceed to gain a 
knowledge and love of his Lord. His life, if it has 
had any religious training at all, has been lived face 
to face with Christ ; but so much a matter of course 
does humankind make the wonders of existence, that 
they see little beyond their precious kingdom of self. 
The great society called the Church was instituted 
solely to bring men to Christ and to keep them at His 
side. One has but to ride with the current, keeping 
ears and eyes wide open, and the mind interested, to 
gain unconsciously a tremendous intimacy with the 
Son of God. In fact, there is such an excess of teach- 
ing Christ, the Church has so levied on every possi- 
ble means of bringing men to Him, that it is regularly 
accused of obscuring Him, hiding Him, from the 
souls of men, by the multitude of details in its train- 
ing. So closely stands the priest to his iDeople, 
preaching Christ, that the infidels insult us with the 
term priest-ridden. All the details of the life of the 
Church are so many rays of light, which have their 
source in Him, the sun and centre of our existence. 



150 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

" I am the vine : you the branches : he that abideth 
in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit : for 
without me you can do nothing." — John xv. 

2. Examine a few of these innumerable details. 
The Pope as head of the Church claims his position 
in the name of Christ, the bishop does the same in 
his diocese, the priest likewise in his parish ; and all 
that they do by virtue of their office is done by His 
authority, and for His glory. The sacraments all 
speak of Him, as they were founded by Him and are 
administered according to His command; at Bap- 
tism the child is admitted into the Church in His 
name, included in the invocation of the Blessed 
Trinity ; at Confirmation the same child receives His 
special gift of the Holy Ghost; in Penance his sins 
are absolved in the name of the Trinity with the sign 
of the cross; in Holy Orders the young priest is 
sent out to preach the truth in His name ; in Matri- 
mony the man and woman are united in His name, 
a union which human power is forbidden to disturb; 
and in Extreme Unction the sick body and the sick 
soul are blessed in His name. The office of the 
preacher in the Church is exercised by His authority, 
and its main duty is to preach Jesus Christ cruci- 
fied; every prayer, whether made to God or to the 
angels and saints, is a petition whose efficacy de- 
pends upon Him ; and the honors publicly paid to 
Mary, Joseph, the saints, and the angels, have their 
sole source in the fact that these human and angelic 
beings are His most faithful and purest servants. 
The tower of this church speaks of Him in that it 
carries His gibbet, the now glorified cross ; this altar 
is the Calvary upon which He was crucified; this 



THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST. 151 

ever-burning light, which tells of His Presence in 
the tabernacle, represents the eternal flame of His 
Body dwelling among us ; these sculptured stations, 
pictured windows, and frescoes, portray His life and 
the glory He shed upon His friends ; and the solemn 
and beautiful ceremonies of the sanctuary, the splen- 
did vestments, shadow forth in a feeble way the de- 
votion of the souls that serve Him. 

3. Last of all, but immeasurably above all in Itself, 
is the Blessed Eucharist. These wonderful details of 
the external life of the Church draw our attention to 
Him, even bring us close to Him, and the Sacraments 
prepare us for union with Him; but the Blessed 
Eucharist is Christ Himself, Who becomes the actual 
and direct guide of the soul that seeks the knowledge 
and the love of Him. One can learn much of any 
man by studying with sympathy and affection his 
ordinary life, as it appears to the general world ; but 
one learns all when the man takes him into his house 
and into his heart, reveals his most secret comings 
and goings, and opens up the past and the present to 
the inquirer. Thus it is with Christ in the Blessed 
Eucharist. The souls who seek for the knowledge 
and love of Him there have little delay in getting 
those treasures which survive the wreck of human 
fortunes on the shores of time. 

III.— The Fruits of Knowledge and Loye. 

1. It is not enough to say that we know and love 
Jesus Christ. Our thoughts and actions must give 
proof of both to ourselves and to our neighbors. 
"By their fruits ye shall know them." Lip-service is 



152 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

easy, and sounds well. Those who serve Christ with 
knowledge and love surprise the world by their wis- 
dom and wit where neither is looked for. The very 
young, the very old, the uneducated, the uncultured, 
fired by the spirit of Christ, excite the wonder of the 
sceptical, who look for wisdom and wit only under 
certain conditions. Catharine of Siena, an ordinary 
lady of rank, who lived in a day when study was 
somewhat primitive and elementary for women of 
rank, had political previsions that surprised states- 
men by their correctness, and theological ability that 
won the reverence of the doctors. St. Paul had much 
of the world's learning in his capacious brain, and 
ranked it with dung when compared with the knowl- 
edge and love of his Lord. The knowledge of Him 
is true wisdom ; for real stupidity seek out the learned 
pagan of the schools, like Spencer, for instance, who 
can follow a human emotion as an Indian follows a 
trail, and is blinder than a bat in the sun when relig- 
ion comes into question. Once you have seen Christ 
as He wishes that all should see Him, the glory of 
this world will have departed. The men that saw 
Him of old on Thabor and Olivet were so enraptured 
with that delight as never to forget the sweet visions. 
An empire put forth all its strength to persuade them 
of their folly in preaching Christ, and shrunk to lit- 
tleness in the effort ; but their faith in Him remained. 
2. To know and to love Christ is a real power in 
our day, and is so acknowledged by the tricky world, 
which would have us politely serve both Christ and 
itself, as do those Catholics who profess their faith 
in Christ proudly, while serving their own pleasures 
and observing no commandments. We have already 



THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST. 153 

been told by Our Lord that no man can serve two 
masters, and yet we are forever trying to perform this 
impossibility. Judas tried it, hoping to make a little 
money without doing his Master much harm, and the 
result was death for Christ, suicide and eternal dis- 
grace for himself. Pilate tried it, and the result was 
a shameful surrender to the murderous Jews, the con- 
demnation of the innocent, and the blasting of his 
own career. Peter tried it in denying Christ to save 
himself from danger, and wept to the last for the in- 
fidelity he displayed toward his Friend and Master. 
It may be taken for granted that where a Pope, an 
Apostle, and a Prince failed, we shall hardly succeed. 
A glance around at the numerous failures among our 
own acquaintances to run with Christ while dallying 
with sin, ought to satisfy us that only thorough knowl- 
edge of Jesus Christ can result in true love and ser- 
vice of Him. 

3. You will come to thorough knowledge and per- 
fect love first by desiring both and asking for them. 
" Hitherto you have not asked anything in my name. 
Ask, and you shall receive; that your joy may be 
full." — John xvi. Next, make certain to keep the 
commandments. "If you love me, keep my com- 
mandments." — John xiv. Have the greatest in- 
terest in performing your duties to all who have a 
claim on you. " By this shall all men know that you 
are my disciples, if you have love one for another." 
— John xiii. Cultivate a particular love for the 
poor, the wretched, the sinful, the helpless. "Amen 
I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these 
my least brethren, you did it unto me. " — Matt. xxv. 
Adherence to these simple rules will lead any honest 



154 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

soul to the knowledge and love of Jesus, and there 
will be no doubt about the possession of these splen- 
did gifts. Here is St. John's testimony: "And b}^ 
this we know that we have known him, if we keep his 
commandments. He who saith that he knoweth him, 
and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the 
truth is not in him ; but he that keepeth his word, in 
him in very deed the charity of God is perfected; 
and by this we know that we are in him." — 1 Ep. 
ii. Walking in the way of the commandments 
keeps the heart open to the divine inspirations. The 
mere study of the ways of the Church in making 
Christ better known to us all will fill us with knowl- 
edge of Him. And then by degrees we may arrive, 
if we choose, at that sublime height attained by St. 
Paul and many others, to regard aU things as mere 
rottenness compared with knowing and loving the 
Son of God. 



Z^ ^dcrdmentfi. 



Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pil- 
lars. — Prov. ix. 1. 

1 saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the seven golden 
candlesticks, one like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment doicn 
to the feet, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. — Apocal. 
i. 12, 13. 

OUTLINE. 

1. Our Lord knew the diflBculty of following His law, and therefore gave 

us the seven sacraments. 

2. Hence, while pagans have some excuse for their commonplace lives. 

Catholics have none. 

3. The great and continuous grace of Baptism is our first strength and 

glory. 

4. Our second is the reception of the Holy Ghost and His gifts in Con- 

firmation. 

5. By Penance we can preserve innocence, establish or protect virtue, 

root out habits of sin. 

6. The Eucharist gives us the direct personal service of Christ. 

7. Matrimony secures for the child a holy and well-ordered home. 

8. Extreme Unction guards the hours of sickness, and soothes the anguish 

of death. 

9. The ill-fortune of those who misuse the Sacraments. 



I. — The Life op Grace. 

1. The Christian is called to the life of grace, to a 
life superior to that of nature, which the pagan usu- 
ally leads. It is no easy matter to live up to the 
Christian standard, particularly in a nation like ours, 
where the pagans are as numerous as the Christians, 
and utterly reject the purity and holiness of life de- 
manded by the teachings and the commands of 
Christ. Paganism looks only to this life and its 
pleasures. Eating and drinking luxuriously, dress- 

155 



156 

ing sumptuously, amusing itself in all possible ways, 
completely given over to carnal delights, these are its 
occupations in leisure hours; and its labors are 
purely for money, earthly power, and rank, as the 
means by which greater pleasures are gained for the 
hours of idleness. It does not recognize the com- 
mandments. The outward forms of decency and re- 
finement it is careful to observe, and in young races 
the natural powers are vigorous enough to keep the 
nature sweet for a long time ; but for the most part 
pagan life is a great swamp from which rise the dead- 
liest vapors, fatal to the life of grace in any Christian 
exposed to them. The earliest Christians lived in 
the very heart of this swamp. We are more fortu- 
nate, yet our position is mournful. It is easier at 
any time to be a pagan than a Christian, because the 
life of grace is a life of effort, struggle, hard labor, 
while the pagan life runs with the current of passion. 
Surrounded as we are by the swamps of paganism, it 
requires all our watchfulness to neutralize the effects 
of their deadly vapors on our souls. Our Lord un- 
derstood the difficulties we would have to meet in 
following His commands; therefore He left us the 
seven sacraments as a perpetual and constant help 
against our own weaknesses and the influence of our 
fellows. 

2. The scheme of these sacraments is of wonderful 
power and beauty. The little child is met at the door 
of life by Baptism and at once made a child of God ; 
when reason has developed Penance sheds its light 
and heat upon his mind and will ; while innocence is 
still strong in him the Eucharist becomes its ram- 
part; at the dawn of manhood Confirmation puts its 



THE SACRAMENTS. 157 

glorious armor on him and sends him out to the 
world's struggle; Matrimony has already secured for 
him a decent home, Holy Orders has long provided 
him with leaders and teachers, and in his last mo- 
ments of sickness and death the soft light of Extreme 
Unction illumines the pathway to the grave. Christ 
cannot be accused of not having provided his children 
with every protection against the assaults of the world 
and their own nature. For this reason there is little 
or no excuse for us when we take up habits of sin, 
and deliberately remain in them. The pagan has 
some excuse. He has been trained as a child of 
nature, and has heard little of the life of grace. Our 
Lord said of the Jews: "If I had not come and 
spoken to them, they would not have sin ; but now 
they have no excuse for their sin. . . . If I had not 
done among them the works that no other man hath 
done, they would not have sin; but now they have 
both seen and hated both me and my father." — John 
XV. To many pagans Christ has not yet spoken and 
so they are without sin ; but to us Our Lord has been 
speaking year after year since our birth and long be- 
fore it, and therefore our infidelities are sins. He 
has protected and adorned us with the jewels of the 
Sacraments. Yet for too large a number the gift of 
the Sacraments has been a mere casting of pearls 
before swine. 

3. We are born to know and love Christ through 
the faith He established. Deep and abiding faith is 
the mark of the true Catholic, and the fruit of faith 
is the knowledge and love of Jesus. This faith is 
placed in us, deep in our souls like an eternal foun- 
tain in the rock, by the sacrament of Baptism, 



158 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

Through all our lives the flow of grace from this holy 
spring is to be endless. Its refreshing waters are in- 
tended to keep green and fruitful the soil of our 
human nature, and to develop in us all the virtues, as 
the mountain stream keeps fertile the valley through 
which it runs. Of itself the grace of Baptism is 
powerful enough, if properly used, to carry a man 
clean and -sdrtuous to his judgment. " He that be- 
lieveth and is baptized shall be saved." — Mark xvi. 
Yet so hard, arid, sandy is the soil of our na- 
ture, that the gracious stream, lacking the cooper- 
ation of our will, might flow for a century through 
the soul, and not secure a single harvest. We have 
seen the phenomenon in many arid Catholics. The 
pearl in this instance was thrown to the swine. 

II. — Three Other Channels of Grace. 

1. To the gift of Baptism Our Lord added the sac- 
rament of Confirmation in which the Holy Ghost 
armed us like a knight of old with breast-plate, 
helmet, shield, and javelin, that we might carry 
Christ's standard honorably and bravely through the 
combats of time. Sin, temptation, nature's inclina- 
tions and passions, the world's bribes, are ferocious 
opponents; but straws are as strong as they when 
men oppose to them wisdom, knowledge, understand- 
ing, counsel, fortitude, piety, and the fear of the 
Lord, as these splendid gifts are given to us in Con- 
firmation. Did we use them as Christ intended, 
there is no power on earth able to overcome us ; but 
not only do we leave them to rust in idleness, we also 
forget that we ever received them, and the jeering 



THE SACRAMENTS. 159 

world is often treated to the spectacle of the Chris- 
tian soldier flying from the field of battle without a 
stain of combat on his glorious armor, or casting it 
aside to fraternize with the enemy, to lie drunken and 
satiated at their feasts, even to die in their shameful 
dissipations. These two sacraments of Baptism and 
Confirmation are alone sufficient to carry us through 
the world with decency and honor and to present us 
before the throne of judgment crowned victors after 
life's battle. Nevertheless, hundreds forget that they 
ever received the innocence conferred by the one, and 
the powers conferred by the other. A second time is 
the pearl cast before the swine. 

2. The generous love of God for His children was 
not satisfied with these two special gifts, and the 
Sacrament of Penance was added to them. That we 
might preserve the innocence of childhood, and pro- 
tect the virtue of our youth the priest of the confes- 
sional was provided for us ; that we might wash away 
the sins of our foolishness, root out the habits of sin, 
and supplant them by habits of virtue, the absolution 
of Penance, with its graces of purification and restora- 
tion, was set like a pillar in the Lord's temple. It is 
a great deal in a world which seeks innocence like an 
epicure his delicacies, to have kept an innocent soul 
in its original purity ; in a world which makes sin 
virtue, to convince a sinner of his filth and make him 
remove it by grace ; in a world which boasts of its 
power to hold man down to nature's level, to break 
the chain of habit and raise man to the supernatural 
life; yet all these things are the common successes of 
Penance. StiU, what multitudes of Catholics avoid 
the sacrament, and to quiet their consciences repeat 



160 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

the childish objections of human pride and ignorance : 
that men should not kneel to man, though the child 
kneels to the parent, the lover to his mistress, the 
criminal to his judge; that our secrets are not the 
priest's, though no one finds any difficulty in telling 
the most shameful secrets to friend, lawyer, physi- 
cian. With Baptism, Confirmation, and Penance 
men might lead the lives of the saints, and with 
Penance alone the world could be kept in order and 
cleanliness. In a third instance the precious pearls 
of Christ are thrown to the swine. 

3. Still, the generosity of God is not exhausted, 
and to these Sacraments is added the great and mys- 
terious gift of the Christ Himself in the Blessed 
Eucharist. Men have remembered the visits of a 
king, or a poet, or a general, or a statesman to their 
houses, and bequeathed the memory " as a rich legacy 
unto their issue." The distinguished visitor usually 
left nothing behind and often took much away, yet 
the honor of the visit was never forgot by the recipi- 
ent, nor by posterity. Yet how numerous the Chris- 
tians who positively decline the visit of Christ under 
the veil of the bread and wine, who wish to forget the 
days when He honored their innocence by His Pres- 
ence, who have cast out all His gifts, the gifts of Him 
Who brought much and borrowed nothing. Eecall 
that this Prince in His earthly time spoke to the dead 
and life returned to them, looked upon the lepers and 
their rottenness fled into its native grave, touched the 
eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, the limbs of 
the paralyzed, and they became sound men. Re- 
member that this Man is beloved of the human race, 
of human history, of time itself, the Eternal King 



THE SACRAMENTS. 161 

even of the pagans ; and wonder at the secret scorn, 
the dead indifference of those whom the visit of a 
king to their houses would overwhelm with honor! 
It is heartlessness and unfaith of this sort which 
disgust us with ourselves, with our race, and force us 
to doubt the reasonableness of our own nature. Once 
more the Lord has cast His choicest pearl to the 
swine. 

III. — The Eeward of the Swine. 

1. Still the record of God's honors grows. The 
love which makes man and woman of one flesh, which 
propagates the human race in love, which trains the 
child and guards the race-nest in love, and which 
man regards rightly as a most perfect thing in the 
human order. Our Lord would honor with perma- 
nency, stability, and perfection, and therefore He 
establishes the Sacrament of Matrimony. Hencefor- 
ward, to those who will it, this noblest form of 
human love may take on a certain character of im- 
mortality, surviving youth, change, beauty, undis- 
turbed by sin and its temptations, never seduced by 
the passion of the moment, superior to the errors of 
the social philosophers, increasing with years, and 
utterly devoted to its human offspring. And that 
this offspring may in a measure touch heaven before 
death, that the visible human form of Christ may in 
a feeble way be ever in the sight of men, that the 
family, the nation, the soul may never be without a 
leader and teacher, that there may be a human link 
between heaven and earth, the Sacrament of Holy 
Orders gives us the priest, the perpetual man, who 
can no more fail from this earth until the judgment 
U 



162 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

than can the memory of the Christ. " How wonderful 
are thy ways, O God, and how incomprehensible thy 
judgments!" Even death has cast over it the holy 
veil of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. As man 
was received at the gate of life by Baptism, so is he 
dismissed to his eternity with the last oiling ; sanc- 
tified at his entrance, sanctified and comforted at his 
departure ; more honorable and more honored at the 
last moment, when he becomes useless to the hard 
world, than at the first, when the world sought him as 
food for its passions. Thus every moment of our 
lives is honored and blessed by the Sacraments of 
Christ. Is it strange that God can excuse no Catho- 
lic for a bad life or a cold heart ! 

2. The more we study the wealth of grace which 
lies at the doors of a Christian, the more we wonder 
that true faith, true knowledge and love of Jesus 
Christ should be absent from any Christian heart. 
The lightest examination of the sacraments is suffi- 
cient to convince any man that here is grace enough 
to nullify all the poisons of paganism, and to build 
up the souls of men to the strength of giants. The 
existence of these sacraments is the condemnation of 
the indifferent and the sinful Catholics. That which 
builds up can also become a source of destruction. 
"Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the 
resurrection of many in Israel." — Luke ii. We 
are Catholics, born to the life of grace, which we 
must accept or go into eternal darkness and pain. 
In the latter case all our blessings turn to maledic- 
tions. Baptism made us the heirs to heaven, and 
instead we inherit hell ; Confirmation enlisted us as 
the soldiers of Christ, and in the end we are classed 



THE SACRAMENTS. 163 

with the traitors ; Penance lifted us up many a time 
to heights of heavenly delight and made us the joy of 
the angels, and behold we are cast down forever to 
the joy of our eternal enemies ; and the Christ of the 
Eucharist, having desired us as His friends and 
intimates, and forced on us eternal life, must con- 
demn us to eternal death and the everlasting friend- 
ship of Satan. All this is the natural result of that 
stupidity and malice which treated the sacraments as 
the swine treat the pearls. "And the spirits be- 
sought him saying; Send us into the swine, that we 
may enter into them. And Jesus immediately gave 
them leave. And the unclean spirits going out, en- 
tered into the swine ; and the herd with great violence 
was carried headlong into the sea, being about two 
thousand, and were stifled in the sea." — Mark v. 



Then when lust hath conceived it hringeth forth sin: and sin, when 
itisfinisJied, hringeth forth death. — James i. 15. 

For the wages of sin is death; hut the gift of God is eternal life 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Rom. vi. 23. 

OUTLINE. 

1. Men understand and value the important positions in life, and keenly 

feel their responsibility. 

2. Yet what are these positions, and their responsibility, compared with 

the dignity and destiny of the Christian ? 

3. Both dignity and destiny are destroyed at one blow by the awful power 

of sin. 

4. The first consequence of sin is our surrender to justice. 

5. The second is the natural results of sin for the whole race, death and 

the grave. 

6. The others are the natural effects flowing from violation of the laws of 

life. 

7. With the fate of public sinners before them men can still talk lightly 

of their sins. 

8. Because the sense of sin is lost in them, as the sense of dirt in an un- 

clean person. 

9. The grace of feeling keenly the stain of sin. 

I.— The Power of Sin. 

1. Men ever have one measure for the business of 
the body, and another for the business of the soul. 
Shrewd and even wise in the affairs of the market, 
they become the veriest fools in dealing with their 
soul's life; and where no manor combination of men, 
no cunning, no personal weakness, could overreach 
them by a penny, any ranter, the simplest of knaves, 
their own weaknesses, can deprive them of grace here 
and heaveu hereafter. They place large value on the 
important places in society. They appreciate to the 

164 



SIN. 165 

utmost the skill of the lawyer, of the physician, and 
of the financier; they feel sincerely the debt which 
all men owe to the faithful captain of the steamer, the 
watchful engineer of the train, the brave general of 
the army, the devoted officer of the state; they praise 
earnestly the honest father of the family, the honest 
officer of a corporation, the honest teacher of the 
school. And none were so quick as they to denounce 
and condemn these people in responsible positions, 
when incapacity, ignorance, negligence, or drunken- 
ness led them into fearful disasters ; when the ship 
went down, or the train was wrecked, when govern- 
ment was robbed, or the army defeated, when the sick 
were neglected, the children corrupted, the banks 
broken, and the country's financial credit endangered, 
because the responsible proved faithless to their great 
trusts. 

2. This is good sense, of course, and it must be 
turned against themselves. If they condemn these 
failures and applaud the sentence to death or to long 
imprisonment, what shall they say in their own de- 
fence? As the baptized children of Christ they have 
held important positions and worn high honors, 
which always carry with them grave responsibilities. 
From the multitude the Lord took them in the day of 
their baptism, and clothed them with the garments of 
the Christian, brought them up in holy homes, in 
innocence, in peace, accustomed them to the super- 
natural life in youth that it might not i3ress their 
shoulders too heavily in age, and promised them 
strength in this life, and eternal happiness in the 
wonderful life to come. In return He asked that they 
should love Him, keep His commandments, speak to 



166 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

all men of Him by example rather than by words, 
and thus spread among men the knowledge and love 
of Him. They were made princes of heaven, all their 
affairs became eternal in importance and interest, and 
the little matters which interest the animal in man 
sank into insignificance. Even the great places in 
the gift of society became small beside the dignity of 
the true Christian. And what a tremendous responsi- 
bility rested upon these favored children of God to 
remember their birthright, to observe its conditions, 
and to arrive safe at the eternal goal. 

3. With one stroke sin destroyed both dignity and 
destiny. The faithless general yielded to treason, 
the captain of the steamer gave way to drunkenness, 
the father of the family became a castaway ; in conse- 
quence an army was defeated, a number of poor souls 
underwent the bitter anguish of death at sea, and the 
children turned beggars and thieves ; and in the same 
way the Christian given over to sin became a traitor 
to his Lord, drowned his destiny in evil, and turned 
his soul with all its graces forth among beggars and 
thieves. If death and execration pursued the traitor, 
the drunkard, and the parent, what punishment shall 
reach the faithless Christian? Here we see the awful 
power of sin. There is nothing in nature like it, 
though nature has terrible agencies of evil. The 
fanged adder which pierces the unwary foot treading 
the safe soil, the swift lightning whose bolt so fear- 
fully pierces life's bright armor, the assassin creeping 
with velvet step and fatal blade behind the vigorous 
victim, are faint types of the suddenness and power 
of sin. Great and sudden catastrophies in nature 
and among men usually make their presence known 



SIN. 167 

by clamor and fearful portents, but sin does its work 
in peace, in dreadful silence, as if God and nature 
stood appalled; and it is only in after years that the 
cries of the victims reach the ears of men. We hear 
the groans of them that perish by death around us, 
but only the angels hear the anguished cries of 
dying, murdered souls. 

II. — The Punishments of Sin. 

1. The power of sin ought to terrify us, but having 
lived in sin or beside it so long we have lost the sense 
of terror. The agencies of death we fear to the last 
moment of our lives, but the slayer of the soul is 
rather loved than feared. We must study the conse- 
quences of sin by the light of the Holy Spirit in 
order to awaken in our hearts that healthful terror 
which removes sin from our households. The first 
consequence of mortal sin is the surrender of our- 
selves to the justice of God. We are criminals, we 
have violated the law, and the offence is known to the 
authorities. What escape can there be for us? At 
any moment we may be summoned to the bar of eter- 
nal justice, this heart may cease to beat, these eyes 
may close to open on the dreadful scene of trial in 
one instant. With what dread criminals regard the 
prison which has ensnared them, the court which 
tries them, the sentence which will infallibly be pro- 
nounced and executed. Yet the violators of the law 
of God suffer no such pangs as these, and continue 
to sin with joy. They know that only a small per- 
centage of men dies suddenly without time for prepa- 
ration, and they count on the long sickness and the 



168 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

death-bed. They are right. It is only the few who 
are surprised in their sins by death. Their mistake 
is in supposing that time for preparation also includes 
the gift of repentance. 

2. Sin carries with it, however, a series of natural 
punishments, which no man can escape. Sickness 
and death are the children of sin ; sickness with its 
wearisome hours, its pain and desolation, death with 
its separations, and the corruption of the grave. 
Study them for a moment. Men who have seen the 
agonies of one dying from the bite of a rattlesnake, 
or from hydrophobia, or from tetanus, never lose the 
memory of these horrors. Yet how few and insigni- 
ficant are these tragedies compared with the sick- 
nesses, separations, deaths of the billions of human 
beings that have passed away since the world began. 
We shudder at the poison of the serpent, the mad 
dog, the rusting nail, which have given a painful 
death to a few persons. But what of this poison of 
sin which has inflicted such suffering on an entire 
race for six thousand years? The serpent and his 
fjoison should not arouse an emotion of fear compared 
with that which the mere mention of sin ought to 
awake in the human heart. And still men do not 
fear and will not understand. Since death must 
come to all men they are satisfied to learn nothing 
from the last sickness, death, and the grave, and they 
continue in their sins. They continue to tremble be- 
fore the serpent, while hugging sin to their breast. 

3. But if the fear of God's justice, and the warning 
of death and the grave do not move them to under- 
standing and terror, perhaps the particular punish- 
ments of particular sins may rouse them to a sense of 



SIN. 169 

sin. The violations of God's laws are often the vio- 
lation of our human nature, sins against our natural 
happiness as well as against the Divine law. In this 
case nature takes vengeance on her own account. In 
the same way sins which affect society and particular 
individuals are avenged by the injured parties. Look 
around you on the world of suffering in all its forms, 
and discover the source of so much misery. From 
hospitals and lunatic asylums, from prisons, from 
sick-rooms, rises one long terrible wail of pain and 
despair. Nature, society, and the wronged are 
avenging the outraged laws of God. The drunkards, 
the impure, the dissipated, the criminals, the invad- 
ers of clean homes, the child-murderers, are paying 
to society, to nature, to man all that they stole from 
these powers. The innocent are suffering too, but 
when we subtract their suffering how much anguish 
remains which has its root solely in the sins of men. 
And again, God is merciful, most unwilling that death 
should surprise us, eager to wake us from the sleep 
of sin before it is too late ; therefore, He sends us the 
lightning-stroke of unexpected affliction to turn our 
wandering and benighted thoughts to heaven. The 
beloved child of the household dies, and broken 
hearts begin to feel a wider separation than that of 
the grave, the gulf of sin between them and the child 
of love ; a fortune disappears, and mean circumstances 
look meaner than the grave when the light of faith 
shines not on them ; and but for sin the child would 
still be living and the fortune still in the treasury. 
When we consider all these things, is it possible that 
we can still have no horror for sin? Could we realize 
them rightly no day would pass without a solemn 



170 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

execration for that evil power which has wrought such 
suffering for man. 

in. — The Sense of Sin. 

1. And still men can sx)eak lightly of sin, and 
praise and love it. Even if the lost souls of the great 
rose from their Infernos to describe the power of sin, 
it is doubtful if men could be affected seriously 
toward a pure life. What a discourse could Herod 
the Little preach in any market-place to-day on the 
misery sin has inflicted upon him these two thousand 
years; in what moving accents Pilate and Judas, 
faithless judge and faithless friend, might describe 
the long centuries of their vain repentance ; in what 
burning words would not Napoleon relate the long 
list of consequences which flowed from his evil deeds 
as the conqueror of Europe; and the commoner 
princes, the multitude of commoner criminals, the 
murderers of virtue, the traders in innocence, the 
wretches that made incomes out of sin, how utterly 
before their pathetic eloquence, descriptive of their 
sufferings, would fade into insignificance the master- 
pieces of Cicero and Demosthenes. Yet none of these 
things would move men to the detestation of sin for 
long. "And he said: then. Father, I beseech thee 
that thou wouldst send him to my father's house, for 
I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, 
lest they also come into this place of torments. And 
Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the 
prophets; let them hear them. But he said: No, 
father Abraham, but if one went to them from the 
dead, they will do penance. And he said to him : If 
they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will 



SIN. 171 

they believe if one rise again from the dead." — Luke 
xvi. 

2. Unless the grace of God gives to men the sense 
of sin, no other power will influence them to avoid it. 
This sense of sin may be likened to the physical 
sense of cleanliness, or to the natural dread of loath- 
some disease. With what uneasiness do clean people 
bear the sensation of dirt on their bodies or gar- 
ments, with what horror do all men fly from the con- 
tagion of small-pox, cholera, or the yellow fever. 
The sense of sin in a human soul arouses the same 
horror and urges to the same flight when this pest of 
the soul appears. This sense of sin was infused into 
us in our baptism, and carefully cultivated by parents 
and teachers in our early childhood and youth. Who 
cannot remember the keen sense and horror of sin 
which he had in the days of his innocence, when the 
slightest falsehoods, the most excusable tempers, the 
lightest disobedience lay on the little soul with more 
weight than the grievous crimes of later years? Why 
is it that we do not carry the child's sense of sin into 
our days of maturity? Because the world cannot 
afford that we should. And therefore it begins its 
vile whisperings and insinuations the moment we ap- 
pear in its arena ; that sin is part of our nature, does 
no permanent harm, both benefits and pleases, has 
few consequences, is regularly practised by most 
respectable and eminent people, and, though de- 
nounced from pulpits, is the favorite of the world. 
It is pointed out from numerous examples that the 
preachers exaggerate all things connected with sin. 
In the end we follow the world, and the sense of sin 
dies within us forever. 



172 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

3. Earely does it return in its original strength and 
beauty. Once we have dipped into sins of habit the 
memory of them is with us to the end, and only the 
shaking off of this mortal coil relieves the soul of the 
eternal flavor of the plague. Let us pray, then, for 
a deep and ever-deepening sense of sin. We have 
seen its power and its multiplied punishments. Let 
us not deceive ourselves with false hopes that we 
shall escape consequences. The man who trusts 
himself to a rotten bridge deserves his fall. The 
laws of nature are inexorable, and God will not in- 
terfere to prevent their action. The neglectful parent 
will have bad children to plague his age, the drunk- 
ard is certain of a painful life and death, the dissi- 
pated die early, the impure are buried in their own 
terrible quicksand. And at the close of the drama 
there remains the last sentence to be imposed by jus- 
tice. "Depart from me, ye accursed, into everlasting 
fire." "For the wages of sin is death." 



Unless you do penance you shall all likewise perish. — Luke xiii. 3. 

OUTLINE. 

1. It astounds us to see the spirit of penance in the sinless Christ and in 

the saints. 

2. While converted sinners have scarcely a tear for their past. 

3. True conversion means lifelong regret for past sins. 

4. And only through penance can we show that regret. 

5. By penance we are saved from the consequences of past and present sin. 

6. Corporal penances are good and salutary. 

7. But the penances attending the strict performance of duty are better. 

8. The rewards given to the contrite of heart. 

I. — The Spibit of Penance. 

1. Common-sense teaches us the necessity of repair- 
ing any injuries we may have done to others. Regret 
is not enough, there must also be atonement and 
reparation. Therefore, sinners who have all but ex- 
tinguished the light of their baptism by steady viola- 
tion of the law, on their return to a Christian life 
must feel sharply the need of atoning in some way 
for their waste of God's graces. The light which the 
Church sheds on the pathway of its children from 
birth to death leaves the Catholic without excuse for 
his wickedness. Pagans may plead their unbaptized 
condition and poor training; but all the details of 
Catholic life and training reproach the faithless sin- 
ner for his lapses from the right. As we have all 
sinned with full knowledge of sin, we are bound to 
make reparation. Thus, the spirit of penance should 

173 



174 

be the distinguishing mark of Christian penitents. 
This is easily understood. "What astounds us is the 
cultivation of this same spirit by our sinless Lord, 
and such saints as Aloysius, who never lost his 
baptismal innocence. The fasts and prayers of Jesus 
amaze us; and the mortifications and penances of 
Aloysius confound us. What need had the Master 
and the perfect disciples of atonement and reparation? 
None. But their love for us, their sense of sin's in- 
justice, their desire to atone for that injustice, urge 
them to the most painful penances. "Christ was 
offered once to exhaust the sins of many." — Heb. ix. 
2. In us, who have such need of the deepest spirit 
of penance, how deficient is the mind and will in this 
regard. The comfort of converted sinners, whose 
youth was rottenness, is often appalling. They seem 
to have become virtuous rather because passion and 
opportunity disappeared, than through the disgust of 
a bad life and the desire for a better one. They have 
utterly forgotten that the seeds of sin planted by them 
in others have borne many harvests, which are being 
reaped year after year, and will continue to fill hell's 
barns long after their judgment. This wild and riot- 
ous parent left his children to grow up like savages ; 
he is now comfortably attending mass and frequenting 
the sacraments, a reformed and sober citizen, while 
his children are scattered over the land, faithful imi- 
tators of his disorders, breeding children even wick- 
eder than themselves ; and he is not even conscious of 
the immense share he must take in the final responsi- 
bility for so much e\dl. This unclean talker filled 
the mind of an innocent youth with vile images and 
his heart with lustful desires in one hour's conversa- 



PENANCE. 175 

tion ; from that moment the youth walked the down- 
ward road of dissipation, while the sinner who 
destroyed him has forgotten his crime,— in fact, has 
never been cognizant of his share in the damnation 
of his brother. 

3. Who shall tell us our forgotten and secret sins 
with all their lamentable consequences? Who can 
stretch out a strong hand and stay the march of these 
consequences before they meet and overwhelm us at 
judgment? God alone has that power. Moved by 
fervent prayers, bitter tears, and severe penances, 
He may convert those whom our example turned into 
evil ways, or may take from us the fearful responsi- 
bility for another's sins. "Be converted and do 
penance for all your iniquities, and iniquity shall not 
be your ruin."— Ex. xviii. "All the people cried 
to the Lord with great earnestness, and they humbled 
their souls in fastings and prayers, both they and 
their wives. And the priests put on haircloths and 
they caused the little children to lie prostrate before 
the temple of the Lord, and the altar of the Lord 
they covered with haircloth. And they cried to the 
Lord the God of Israel with one accord, that their 
children might not be made a prey, and their wives 
carried off, and their cities destroyed, and the Holy 
Things profaned, and that they might not be made a 
reproach to the Gentiles. Then Eliachim the High- 
Priest of the Lord went about all Israel, and spoke to 
them saying: 'Know ye that the Lord will hear your 
prayers, if you continue with perseverance in fastings 
and prayers in the sight of the Lord ' "—Judges iv. 
Continuance in penance is only possible when the 
soul is possessed of the spirit of penance. 



176 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 



II. — Eeasons fob Penance. 

1. The spirit of penance provides us with the par- 
ticular reasons for doing penance in our own behalf. 
We must atone for the sins and sinful negligences of 
the past, that kept us from rising to that high stand- 
ard of life demanded of the humblest Christian. 
Mortal sin is like a poison in the blood, which with- 
out killing the body outright destroys the fineness of 
the physical faculties. The sick cannot see, hear, 
taste, and feel like healthy persons, and their physi- 
cal enjoyments are thus curtailed. All that they do 
is tainted with their sickness. It is the same with 
habitual sinners. The spiritual life is so low in them 
that no action of theirs but seems tainted with the 
poison of sin ; and they go about the world helping to 
lower its spiritual vitality by their words and actions 
and indifference. They must not only atone for the 
sins deliberately committed, but are bound to do 
what they can to repair the mischief their sad condi- 
tion unwittingly caused to others. The justice of 
God is infinite, and there is no escaping it. The 
debt we contract through sin must be paid to the last 
farthing. The injury done to others and to ourselves 
must be repaired ; and at the same time we must not 
forget the injury done to God by the violation of His 
commandments, by direct treason to His Son, Jesus 
Christ. Some of these injustices we can repair, as 
we pay a debt in money, but others are beyond our 
powers, as in the case of widespread slander and 
wasted graces. In such cases God is satisfied with 
contrite hearts, a pure life, and the practice of 



PENANCE. 177 

penance. It is all that we are able to do, and that is 
sufficient to atone for the wretched past. 

2. But we must do penance not only to atone for 
the past, but to protect the present from the conse- 
quences of our own and our neighbors' sins. Sin has 
natural as well as spiritual consequences, and the laws 
of nature, once outraged, are pitiless in their ven- 
geance. The habit of sin begets a weakness in the 
will, which sometimes becomes a physical disease, as 
in the case of drunkards. What painful combats the 
converted sinner has to endure with his perverted 
nature ! He is often overcome by despair. The mis- 
erable children brought into the world by a dissipated 
parent remain to plague and terrify him by their evil 
lives long after he has received the grace of true con- 
version ; and in a similar way the evil passions which 
we generated in our days of sin return to torment our 
imagination and our bodies when cleanliness of soul 
has become a second nature to us, and when the mere 
thought of sin feels like the touch of material filth. 
We always stand in danger from our neighbor's sins. 
The calamities that befell the Jewish nation were 
shared by the innocent and virtuous, who endured the 
anguish of exile, poverty, and death along with their 
sinning brethren. We must therefore do penance 
to escape these consequences flowing naturally from 
man's violation of the laws of God and the laws of 
nature. 

3l B seems even; necessary that innocence shall do 
penance in order to bridge the chasm that lies be- 
tween it and virtue. How many have passed out of 
innocence without entering the house of tried virtue. 
The animal is always strong in us, even where tempta- 
13 



178 THE chaplain's sermons. 

tion is absent. It is a fierce beast and quickly de- 
vours both the new and the old travellers on life's 
road. To tame this beast, to make him the domestic 
servant where he would fain be the master of the 
highway, penance is most necessary; and thus the 
youth whose innocence is scarcely yet conscious of 
passion, and the men of tried virtue, alike must de- 
pend upon the works of penance to keep them true to 
God. " Unless you do penance you shall all likewise 
perish." Finally, charity also compels us to do what 
we can in making atonement for the sins of others, 
for the souls in purgatory, for the indifferent, for 
the unwilling, even for the most hardened sinners, 
whose debts to justice the saints so often took upon 
their own shoulders in the hope of saving them. 
"Bear ye one another's burdens and so you shall 
fulfil the law of Christ." This was the spirit of 
penance in Our Lord, who gave Himself up as a 
scapegoat for the sins of men. 

III. — How TO Do Penance. 

1. All things done or borne in a penitential sprit 
are good and salutary penances, but not all things 
are to be undertaken without careful consideration. 
To fast and pray, to give alms, to render service to 
the afflicted, are possible to all at times; but the 
duties of our state, ill-health, and poverty may very 
often make these penances impossible. We are not 
thereby absolved from doing penance. It is a com- 
mon experience that many who find themselves unable 
to fast, give alms, and visit the needy, never do 
penance in any other form ; and it is also not infre- 



PENANCE. 179 

quent that many make the corporal penances a means 
of deceiving themselves as to the actual condition of 
their souls. This latter was the sin of the Pharisees, 
who seemed to think that their perfect observance of 
the external features of the law, their long fastings 
and public prayers, made up for their hidden sins of 
oppression and pride. In both these cases the spirit 
of penance is the corrective. It points out to the 
sick, the poor, the occupied, many ways of satisfying 
the justice of God, and prevents them from falling 
into indifference; and it hinders others from making 
too much of the corporal works of penance, which 
their condition enables them to perform. 

2. A penance open to all, yet of the highest value, 
though hardly considered as a penance, is the strict 
performance of duty. Yery few dream how much 
self-denial is involved in the attemi)t to perform ordi- 
nary duties with perfect care and attention. The 
hearing of Mass, the act of praying, care of the inter- 
ests confided to us, healthful economy, the main- 
tenance of loving relationships with our own, if they 
are to be done with decency, require much effort, 
study, and self-denial. This fact is often overlooked, 
and in consequence we see penitents of great merit 
devoted to fastings and prayers and charities, who 
are sad failures in the matter of performing impera- 
tive duties. For parents, therefore, a natural and 
noble penance is increased devotion to the welfare of 
their children, and increasing affection for them ; for 
sons and daughters a saving penance would be the 
practice of perfect obedience; for the young the 
avoidance of temptation perfectly, and of extrava- 
gance, would be salutary penances; for workmen it 



180 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

would be a penance to show generosity in their care 
of an employer's interests; for all a saving penance 
would be to do more than the law demands. That is, 
hear a second Mass, or attend benediction on Sunday, 
earn salary or wages well and then throw in a half 
hour for justice's sake, make acts of resignation in 
trouble, and then go a step farther and make an act 
of thanksgiving, again for justice's sake. 

3. It is wonderful the regard which God lavishes 
on sinners who testify to their repentance by doing 
penance. When the prophet Jonas preached in 
Ninive, and warned the people that their sins would 
destroy their city in a short space of time, the en- 
tire population with the king at their head did 
penance in sackcloth and ashes, forcing even the 
beasts of the field to fast with them ; and God not 
only heard their prayers and forgave them, but His 
Divine Son used their name in His day to reproach 
the Jews. "The men of Ninive shall rise in judg- 
ment with this generation, and shall condemn it ; be- 
cause they did penance at the preaching of Jonas. 
And behold a greater than Jonas here." — Matt. xii. 
Our Lord also declared: "I say to you that there 
shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth 
penance, more than upon ninety -nine just, who need 
not penance." — Luke v. On the other hand for those 
who have no use for penance, and can see no need for 
it in their own lives or the lives of others, God has 
written down their punishment. " The inheritance of 
the children of sinners shall perish, and with their 
posterity shall be a perpetual reproach." — Eccl. xli. 
" And I will visit the evils of the world, and against 
the wicked for their iniquity." — Isa. xiii. 



J^ofg C^ureMg. 



And whilst they were eating, Jesus took bread; and blessing broke, 
and gave to them, and said: Take ye and eat : This is my Body. 
— Mark wiv. 22, 

OUTLINE. 

1. We are so accustomed to the ordinary story of the Last Supper as to 

hear it without special emotion or deep interest, 

2. Yet when it is told to us from another standpoint than that of the 

Evangelists, and in a different fashion, its wealth of interest amazes 
us. 

3. And we realize that this wonderful Last Supper is repeated in the 

Church as often as Mass is said, and with similar circumstances. 

4. The aim of Our Lord in establishing the Blessed Eucharist was that 

He might forever be physically among men. 

5. Henceforward, without His Body and Blood there was to be no spirit- 

ual progress for men or for society. 

6. Union with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is the most perfect and 

fruitful union which man can have with God. 

7. Through this sacrament the glorious body of the Resurrection has fed 

the believing part of the human race for twenty centuries. 

8. And the human priesthood has had conferred upon it the honor of per- 

petually repeating for men the sacrifice of Calvary, the glory of 
Mount Olivet. 

9. The indifference of so many sinners to this glorious Presence is as dif- 

ficult to explain as the treason of Judas. 

I. The Last Supper. 

1. It is to be regretted that so many Catholics miss 
the glory of this day, and fail to catch the full beauty 
of that scene in the supper-hall, when Our Lord gave 
Himself forever to His brethren. We read the evan- 
gelist's description of the Last Supper with reverence, 
of course, but without any special emotion, such as 
would stir us if Napoleon or any popular hero were 
the subject of the story. Christ was God, and for us 
naturally all other wonders of His life are absorbed 
in that fact. But they ought not to be obscured. 

181 



182 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

Their natural and supernatural beauty and sublimity 
ought to appeal to our minds and hearts and bring us 
nearer to Him Who was both God and Man. When 
we lose sight of them, we lose sight of Him in part. 
He became man that we might understand His love 
for us better, and might love Him the more easily. 
All His human side was the expression of the 
Divine love for us in the ways we can best understand. 
Therefore, these scenes of His life should be very dear 
to us, and should be closely and lovingly studied. 
He took bread and wine, the most beautiful symbols 
of all human food, as the veil of His wonderful gift to 
us ; He chose the commonest, yet most emphatic cere- 
mony of our social and physical life, the hour of eat- 
ing, for the granting of the gift ; and He made it His 
last testament, leaving to His children the entire es- 
tate which His Father had given Him. 

2. Thirteen men sat down in the supper-room to 
celebrate the religious feast peculiar to the Jewish 
nation. The thirteen were devoted friends, had been 
companions for some years in the same enterprise, and 
were under the command of a leader whose fame had 
filled the land through the wonders of healing He had 
done. No idea of disaster, separation, death, crime, 
tragedy, entered the mind of any man present save 
one. They were all healthy, young, ambitious, hope- 
ful, proud of their leader and their discipleship, and 
they looked forward to many years of comradeship, 
labor, and increasing honor under their Master. 
How shocked, how horrified, how humiliated, would 
these confident men have become could they at that 
moment have seen the darkness and crime of the next 
twenty-four hours. One had already arranged to play 



HOLY THURSDAY. 183 

the part of traitor to his Master before the night 
passed, and by the morning dawn of the second day 
would be in his grave a disgraced, an infamous 
suicide ; the beloved Master was to leave the table for 
the prison, the prison for the tribunal, the tribunal 
for the scaffold, the scaffold for the stranger's grave, 
all within the short space of a day ; the chief of the 
disciples was to disgrace himself within a few hours 
by an act of cowardice ; and the others were to fly in 
terror from the Master they loved, thinking more of 
their own safety than of His. Never again were these 
thirteen to sit together in such harmony and love, 
and each was doomed to a life of hardship, and a 
death of violence. Look at the scene again under 
this light, and say if any more strange or awful has 
been enacted in the history of man. 

3. Yet this is the exact truth with regard to the 
Last Supper, and might be made still more vivid by 
giving all the strange details connected with the 
scene. Moreover, it was not to be a scene of the 
moment, thereafter the mere historical fact; but for 
all time it was to be repeated among men with an ap- 
palling fidelity to the first circumstances. The bread 
and wine were to be changed continually into the 
Body and Blood of the Master ; the great feast was 
never to end, and the terror of the disciples, the 
treason of Judas, the meanness of Peter were to be its 
mournful shadows in every age ; for thus the Mass is 
offered up to this moment on Catholic altars, while 
outside rages the same world that plotted about the 
hall of the Last Supper, ready with jailers, soldiers, 
prisons, corrupt judges, mad populace, scourge, 
thorn-crown, cross, and Calvary to do away with Him 



184 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

Wlio calls Himself under the veil of the Bread and 
wine, as once under the veil of the carpenter, the Son 
of God and the King of the human race. How terri- 
ble look the Last Supper and the Mass in this light ! 
What a strange, what a wonderful scene was that 
which first saw the bread and wine made the Body 
and Blood of Christ for "the life of the world." 
Who can look upon the actors seated so calmly about 
the table, upon the grave Master, upon the pallid 
traitor, without infinite interest, infinite speculation? 

n. The Body of Christ. 

1. Men sometimes wonder why Christ gave us such 
a gift, and it appears to them the strangest that God 
could offer to man. Many Protestant leaders of 
thoughtful and pious nature find it impossible to 
comprehend the Gift. When Our Lord first described 
It, many of His former disciples found it quite as in- 
comprehensible, and "walked no more with him." 
They said one to another, as so many say to Catho- 
lics in this day, " This saying is hard, and who can 
bear it." Yet if there be any gift in man's possession 
more comprehensible than another, it is the gift of 
self from a lover to the object of his love. "Two 
souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat 
as one," is the poet's exact and striking description 
of true and perfect love realized by actual union. 
When Our Lord established the Blessed Sacrament he 
achieved the highest expression of the God-Man's 
love for His people ; He gave himself in His entirety 
to every soul that loved Him ; He gave Himself to 
each one in every age of the world, in every condi- 



HOLY THURSDAY. 185 

tion ; and thus there could be no favoritism charged 
against Him, no jealousy on our part, for the slave, 
the beggar, the outcast of the last century of time 
stands in the same relation to Him in this sacrament 
as the Apostle, the prince, the philosopher of the 
Master's day. He achieved at the same time His own 
wonderful delight: "My delight is to be with the 
children of men." It is given to no human lover to 
bestow himself so completely upon the beloved. 
Such a power belongs only to God. When the 
mother has exhausted herself in her devotion to her 
child, she never comes as near to his heart as the 
woman whom he makes his wife ; when husband and 
wife are in the most complete accord their union is 
still subject to death, and their hearts suffer a holy 
division when the child claims a share of their affec- 
tion ; but the union of Christ and His beloved in the 
Blessed Eucharist is absolute and perfect, subject 
neither to time nor death nor any limitation, and is 
both physical and spiritual according to man's nature. 
2. This sweet Body of Christ, therefore, became in 
a most peculiar and perfect way "the life of the 
world." For nearly twenty centuries the Christian 
world has sat at the banquet of the Last Supper, men 
coming and going by generations, so that the great 
feast has been continuous. Peter has always been 
there, and the other Apostles ; and Judas has been 
represented by individuals regularly, by nations at 
critical times. The old world broke up a score of 
times, but the Christian era has endured amid all ac- 
cidents of time and fortune, because Christ has been 
in its bosom; not merely the Christ of history, of 
the Sacred Books, of the faith of men, but the Christ 



186 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

of Nazareth, of Calvary, of Mount Olivet, in His 
Body and Soul. He has been nearer to this modern 
world than He ever was to the Judean age. For the 
meanest island of the remotest oceans is as near to 
Him in His tabernacle as was Bethany in the days of 
his loving visitations to the home of Lazarus. With- 
out Him in the Eucharist there is no real progress for 
any human being or any human society. His Body 
and His Blood are now the condition of life and happy 
continuance for man and society. " Except you eat 
the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you 
shall not have life in you." — John vi. 

3. And what vigorous, buoyant, fruitful life that 
must be which has its arteries filled with the current 
that flows in the veins of the Eternal Christ ! What 
an incomparable union ! We are touched to tears by 
the examples of earthly union between devoted beings, 
we are often in admiration of the perfect union 
between beautiful inanimate things. The close knit- 
ting of the mother to the child of her flesh, of the 
friend with the friend as between David and Jona- 
than, have given the orators themes to stir the heart. 
The pathetic relationship between the rose and the 
sun, the final result of earth's forces in the sparkling 
juice of the grape, have inspired the poets in their 
sweetest and noblest songs. Yet how poor and mean 
are these beside the union of Christ with His beloved 
in the Eucharist. It has no parallel, no imitations, 
no shadows. It is unique, for the Son of God is the 
only Being of His kind in the universe. "And his 
countenance was as lightning, and his raiment as 
snow." — Matt, xxvii. 



HOLY THURSDAY. 187 



III. The Glory of His Priesthood and People. 

1. The astonishing feature of this Gift of Himself 
to His beloved is that he made it in a manner subject 
to His priesthood. To the priest He freely com- 
mitted this power of bringing Him physically among 
His people, and to no other ; and so absolutely, that 
without the priest there is no established means of 
securing His beautiful presence in the tabernacle, and 
of distributing Him among His own. Thus, when 
the English and German nations banished the priest 
from their confines, they drove out the Christ of the 
Eucharist; from their villages and temples He de- 
parted, and the light which had illumined them from 
early times was extinguished. The faith might re- 
main in part, or in its entirety, as in the case of a few 
faithful families, but the Master Himself, the Body 
of the Eesurrection morning went into exile with His 
priest. This Sacrament is, therefore, in a special 
sense the glory of the priesthood, both in its begin- 
ning, since it was founded in the presence of the first 
priests, and in its continuance, since it is a preroga- 
tive of the priesthood to bring it upon the altar. 
Hence, the priesthood is an office as enduring as time 
and the church, and its chief glory is its connection 
with the Blessed Eucharist. And for the people the 
same glory may be claimed, though of a different de- 
gree. The vitality and the perpetuity of the Chris- 
tian people are from Him in this Sacrament; and 
without His Body and Blood there is no longer any 
true life or real glory for any nation. 

2. How then can we explain the indifference, the 



188 THE chaplain's sermons. 

lack of interest, the absence of emotion, which so 
many Catholics suffer from on this wonderful day, 
and on every day of the year? What is to be said in 
defence of men and women with a certain belief in 
Christ, who can sit in His sacramental presence, year 
after year, without ever a thought of receiving Him, 
feeling even repugnance at the thought of communion? 
They are as inexplicable as Judas in his treason, who 
betrayed such a Master for thirty pieces of silver! 
Had he sold the Lord for a kingdom, or the first 
place in the Roman court, we might comprehend his 
baseness; but to purchase infamy so meanly, it is 
beyond us ! The neglectful are of the same stripe of 
meanness. For the laziness and dead indifference of 
these earthly years, they will probably pay a heavy 
sum to justice. They hope to receive Him once for 
all when death claims them. But they can be assured 
that they who do not recognize His beauty in the 
vigor of mind and body will hardly recognize Him in 
the mists and damps of death ! 



iVbto <Ae7'e icas wwcA grass in the place : the men therefai'e sat down 

in number about Jive thousand. — John vi. 10. 
But while the men were sleeping his enemy came, sowed cockle amid 

the wheat, and went his way. — Matt. xiii. 25. 

OUTLINE. 

1. Why is it that the average man takes so feeble an interest in his soul? 

2. The deep interest men take in the affairs of earthly life. 

3. Men lack not in intelligence, vocation, or in the graces peculiar to 

their sex. 

4. Their trouble is that they think there is too much religion, and not 

enough money in the world. 

5. They also think that nature must have moderate indulgence. 

C. They do not feel that God keeps a close watch on the course of obscure 
persons. 

7. Convictions of this kind once drowned a world, and destroyed Sodom 

by fire. 

8. God did not make men the superior sex to get from them inferior 

service. 

I. Where are the Men? 

1. These questions are asked seriously, because 
there is to be found among men an indifference to re- 
ligion for which it is hard to account. The emotional 
part of religion is left entirely to women, at which we 
need not wonder ; but in repressing religious emotion 
the men have also learned to repress religion itself in 
its influence over their hearts. This is wrong to 
begin with. The church has need of them and they 
have need of religion. Their strong simple nature 
does the best work for Christ and the neighbor ; and 
the force of their passions makes the aid of grace a 
more imperative necessity than for women. They 

189 



190 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

have souls to save, they have works of grace to do ; 
yet what a tremendous number of them could be ad- 
vertised as lost; how many could fitly bear on their 
souls the legend of certain dwellings : vacant, or let to 
Satan. In all religious gatherings they are conspic- 
uous by their absence. What is wrong with them? 
where are they assembling in the hours which belong 
to God? 

2. The second question can be answered easily. A 
round number of them can be found in the disreput- 
able places of the world; in the saloons drinking 
down health, steadiness, the food and education of 
their children, the happiness of their homes along 
with the whiskey ; in the gambling-houses, victims to 
an infernal excitement ; in the brothels, slaves of their 
meanest appetite. Another set can be found in re- 
spectable commercial life, so deep in the business of 
money-making that no time is left for the soul ; or in 
dishonest methods of gain ; or in the foul political life 
of certain circles, which deal in bribery, direct steal- 
ing, vote-buying, blackmailing, packing of legisla- 
tures, and hidden tyrannies over the helpless. A 
third set is engaged in the study of atheism and In- 
gersoUism, which is atheism in the mud, in support- 
ing filthy literature, in attending the dirtiest of the 
aesthetic theatres and art exhibitions, in whittling 
down their faith to the vanishing point, in studying 
how far they can go toward scepticism without losing 
the chance to die well. A goodly percentage is hard 
at work in making themselves the worst of fathers, 
husbands, sons, and citizens by any means they can 
lay hands on. And finally a very large number is so 
weighty with adipose virtue, respectability, correct- 



WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE MEN. 191 

and the like, that they can neither move them- 
selves, nor be moved by others, to any good work but 
that of dozing through the formal religious exercises 
publicly required of every Catholic. God and the 
earnest look upon them with awe. 

n. Has God Neglected Them.^ 

1. One might easily suppose from the universality 
of their indifference that in creating them God had 
purposely left them deficient in some respects ; but a 
glance at their habits of life does not bear out the 
supposition. They have the keenest and most intel- 
ligent interest in the art of pleasure-seeking and of 
money-making; their taste in dress is good; their 
understanding of athletics, of the training of the 
body, of sport is remarkable ; their success in busi- 
ness is evident ; their organizations for all the needs 
of society, of individuals, of government are marvel- 
lous in their adaptation to the particular needs ; they 
are the statesmen, the thinkers, the rulers, the fighters 
of the world. It is not clear that they are deficient 
in reason or decency by nature. It may be that God 
has failed to give them a true vocation in religious 
matters, and that they are, in consequence, at the 
mercy of passion and whim. Yet, if so, how do we 
account for the splendid vocations of history; the 
calling of Moses and Aaron, of Samuel and Saul, of 
the great prophets and priests, of the Apostles, of the 
innumerable priests that are and have been? Why 
are the great positions of church and state, of art and 
commerce and the trades, given to men? These posi- 
tions all presuppose religion, without which they 



192 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

cannot be properly held. Why is the man made the 
head of the family and the father of children, if God 
has not distinctly called him to positions suited to his 
nature? They cannot be filled by fools or sinners, 
they need brains, heart, principle ; and that man has 
provided these essentials is proof that the Creator en- 
dowed him with a vocation, the vocation of his sex. 

2. It is often said by the observant that the restraints 
of religion and the educative forces it employs are 
not as strong as youth requires; that the Creator 
should have given men more of the gentleness of 
women, if he expected even as much from them in 
religious fervor. But see the restraints and impulses 
provided by religion for the boy and the youth before 
advancing this supposition ! What order and peace 
in the Christian society, what honest laws honestly 
enforced, what wealth of opportunity, what a regard 
for public decency ! See the homes in which the boy 
is trained, its baptized parents, guarded by church 
and legislature, washed by the river of the sacraments, 
flooded with the spirit of Christian art and literature. 
Take note of the innumerable influences thrown about 
the child, the inducements offered him at every stage 
of his career. It io impossible that any one can ac- 
cuse the Lord of providing means unequal to the 
strain which nature and circumstances put on them. 

m. Explanation of their Indifference. 

1. No, God cannot be made to bear the burden of 
their indifference. The trouble with the men is that 
they are worm-eaten by certain popular convictions, 
which have got into their spiritual blood no matter 



WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE MEN. 193 

how. The elders are convinced first of all that there 
is too much religion in the world. So there is, too 
much in one spot, and too little in others ; too much 
in the women, too little in the men. The clean boy 
who enters the world from the sanctuary of home, 
ready for a virtuous life, has this whispered in his ear 
every moment; his father has talked it for years to 
others, though careful never to say so to his own 
son ; but the people he taught are saying it for him ; 
which is just as well, as the boy will be proficient in 
indifference within a year. Secondly, men are con- 
vinced that it is money, not religion, which makes the 
mare go. They preach this doctrine to one another 
until legal dishonesty, that is, dishonesty permitted 
by the law or the canons of trade, becomes a virtue. 
And when they hear the denunciation of Christ: 
"Woe to you, rich;" or that other: "After these 
things do the heathens seek ; " they hear with deaf 
ears, and a half-breathed conviction that " they didn't 
know everythin' down in Judee." 

2. Men are convinced in the third place that nature 
must have its way. Youth has riotous passions, and 
this madness is argument for them that the passions 
should have at least moderate indulgence until sense 
and satisfaction bring them back to decency. The 
sins of the flesh are without reproach, they even carry 
a certain honor with them ; the virtuous are consid- 
ered inferior, cold-blooded; the sensual are at least 
secretly commended as bad boys. Christ was of a 
different opinion when he strengthened His Father's 
law : Thou shalt not commit adultery. The Apostles 
were not afraid to write for the heathen world that 
" neither fornicators . . . nor murderers . . . would 
13 



194 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

enter the kingdom of heaven." How differently this 
classification reads from the worldly opinion. Mur- 
derers and fornicators on the same level. But men 
are not so convinced that nature should have its way, 
when that way involves the honor of their own house- 
hold, of their wives, daughters, and other relatives. 

3. Finally men are convinced that Providence does 
not take so close a hold of this world, nor deal so 
severe a judgment as the priests would have them 
believe. See how many lead the most abominable 
lives, yet die in their beds after making peace with 
God; see how peacefully even the sinful die with 
judgment ahead of them ; see the innumerable sinners 
laughing their way through the world ; see the Cath- 
olics even that drop into sin and survive it to sin 
again. But who sees the percentage of these souls 
that drop into hell? Who stands at the death-beds 
of shame and despair watching the souls that go out 
into the eternal darkness? Only the officials, the 
police, the keepers of asylums and hospitals take note 
of that sad procession which winds through the gate 
of death in secrecy to judgment. Kemember that 
mercy is not indifference on God's part, though the 
indifferent here would have it so. These convictions 
rule the lives of the indifferent men. Here is what is 
wrong with them. 

rV. The Eesult. 

1. It was convictions of this sort that led to the im- 
mense calamities, private and public, recorded and 
forgotten, which have sent nations, cities, individuals 
into hell at one stroke. Noah was the only one of 
his time invited to build a boat of escape; those 



WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE MEN. 195 

whom he invited were too sure God did not interfere 
with the world so awfully to accept. Lot was the 
only man warned to leave Sodom with his family, 
and out of Gomorrha went no living man. There 
were hundreds of money-seekers in those cities, but 
somehow their money did not make that particular 
mare go. In one night death struck twenty-five 
thousand young Hebrews w^ho sinned with daughters 
of the Madianites; it would be interesting to hear 
their present opinion on the need of indulging nature. 
Nature is much, but the law is more; if it were not, 
where would the multitudes be? Of what could we 
be secure if the laws, the certainties, that rule the 
seasons, the fruitfulness of the earth, the steadiness of 
civilized society, the moral and the spiritual life of 
man were at the caprice of such convictions as rule 
the disordered hearts of the indifferent and the pro- 
fessed sinners? The ten commandments mean just 
what they say, and hell stands for their violators as 
truly as heaven for their observers. That God rules 
the world men are finding out at the rate of forty 
thousand a day, which is the number of adults prob- 
ably appearing daily for judgment at the court of the 
Blessed Trinity. 

2. How many men, think you, if their good sense 
were awakened on this matter, would wait for death 
and judgment to discover some elementary truths: 
that religion, for instance, is the only coin good for 
eternity, that you cannot scrape enough of it together 
to pay your way while on a sick-bed a brief time, and 
that while earthly coin may make the mare go here, 
it will not lift the soul an inch above hell? Petted 
nature, about whose strength we boast so much, as if 



196 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

we were its slaves at certain periods in spite of God 
and reason, turns coward and weakling at tlie stench 
of tlie grave, and carries us no farther. Christ him- 
self has declared that He takes such an interest in 
the world, that not a hair falls from our heads without 
His knowledge ; how then can we suppose Him in- 
different to our sins? What a spectacle then do the 
men make in their affected indifference to religion ! 
what an injury do they inflict on their vigorous sex ! 
what an insult to the God who made them the superior 
sex, only to get inferior service from them! The 
purer the diamond the better it stands the work of the 
lapidary ; the stronger the nature, the higher its spe- 
cial gifts, the more do God and man ask of it. If men 
should not be found as often in the churches as women, 
owing to their peculiar avocations and temperament, 
they should at least be beyond indifference. 



t^c C^xietian S^nttfg. 



And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth; and He was 
subject to them. And His mother kept all these things in her Iteart. 
And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age, and grace with God and 
men. — Luke ii. 51, 52. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The three altars in every church remind men of the Holy Family. 

2. Mary and Joseph in their careers are types of the Christian parent, and 

in their characters models for all fathers and mothers. 

3. Yet God demands more of parents than of Mary and Joseph, because 

Jesus was not dependent on them for His success in life. 

4. Christ raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament chiefly for the 

child's sake. 
6. Home is the child's temple, whose priest is the father, whose angel is 
the mother. 

6. Church and State are mainly concerned with protecting parents 

against the virtue-vendors, who look to each generation for the regu- 
lar supply of managers and patrons of infamy. 

7. Yet too often parents are no more than indifferent teachers, or de- 

graded slave-drivers over their children. 

8. Tne bitter and deserved judgment which awaits the worthless parent. 

I. The Standard and the Models. 

1. Right and left of tlie main altar, where reposes 
the Divine Humanity of Our Lord, stand the altars 
and statues of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, and 
Joseph her glorious Spouse. So that in all our 
churches the people have ever before them this touch- 
ing and imposing reminder of the Holy Family as it 
once existed in Judea, as it exists to-day in the courts 
of heaven; and only in Catholic churches are these 
altars and statues found, or is any honor paid to the 
noblest souls, the sweetest and holiest family that 
ever graced this world. You find men ever busy 

197 



198 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

erecting statues to poets, generals, statesmen, and 
nobodies, in public places ; it is left to the Catholic 
alone to do God's own family this honor. The high- 
est type of the Christian family is thus represented 
on our altars; and while Jesus, Mary, and Joseph 
thus stand united in the common family bond, we 
shall never want for that standard of excellence, to 
which the true Christian family should attain. The 
Holy Family is the model of the Christian family. 
Its two guardians are the model of all Christians par- 
ents. Its history is the common history of the 
families that make up society. It was poor, humble, 
ignored, and unknown, sometimes persecuted, during 
its course ; as is the case with the average family, it 
was subject to sorrow and change; its members passed 
away one by one to death ; its one glory was the vir- 
tue of its members ; it became immortal through its 
one glorious flower, the Child Jesus. 

2. St. Joseph was a good type of the ordinary 
man. He was a carpenter, and supported his family 
by steady labor; nothing positive is known of his 
birth or his death, neither wealth nor rank was his : 
which is the history of l;he common man of every age. 
But this obscurity did not hinder him from receiving 
the most wonderful honors from God. Daily he ex- 
ercised and enjoyed all the tender and beautiful 
privileges of a father toward the Son of God ; held 
Him in familiar embrace, fed Him, trained Him ; died 
in his arms, with the tears and moans of Jesus and 
Mary in his ears; and entered Limbo, the glorious 
messenger of the Saviour to the souls that hungered 
for His coming, commissioned to tell them all that he 
had seen and heard as the head of the Holy Family. 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 199 

In her history the Blessed Mother is a type of the 
ordinary mother. She was the careful mistress of 
the home, the loving consort of Joseph, the devoted 
mother of her Son. Her birth and death are knoTSTi 
to us only by tradition; she is effaced before her 
Child, she is exalted only to make more certain His 
Humanity. Yet this obscurity did not hinder her 
from becoming Queen of Yirgins, of mothers, of an- 
gels; the model of all women and their glory. In all 
sorrow she was first; in the sorrow of Bethlehem, 
turned out of the inn ; in the sorrow of the flight, 
turned out of her country ; she saw Joseph carried to 
his rest, stood under her Son's cross, saw Him ascend 
into heaven, and bore her lonely pilgrimage for many 
years after her glorious family had passed from the 
world. She is the Queen of suffering mothers. Her 
devotion to Jesus, Joseph, and the home of Nazareth 
is the standard for all women, married and unmarried, 
in the circle of the home. 

II. Pakental Eesponsibility. 

1. It may seen absurd to demand of ordinary par- 
ents as much as was demanded by God from Mary 
and Joseph ; yet it is certain that He may demand 
. even more. The Son of God was the Prince of Heaven, 
not dependent on His Mother or St. Joseph for the 
continuance of His life or the success of His mission ; 
they might have been the most helpless, and sinful, 
and unworthy of parents with regard to these things. 
But the ordinary child depends for all things on the 
parents. He is at their mercy, and they can practi- 
cally ruin him. To present him a decent citizen to 



200 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

the state, a decent Christian to Heaven, requires all 
the care and intelligence of which any parent is cap- 
able. Home is the nest of the human race. To 
understand how much depends upon the parents, fol- 
low in imagination tlie flight of the young birds day 
after day, all over the world from millions of homes. 
They go forth to fill the vacant places of those whose 
flight has passed into eternity; they become the 
beneficent rulers of the world, the students and writers, 
the priests and teachers, the business managers, the 
parents of happy homes, the trainers of the next 
healthy and religious generation; and passing to 
their judgment sit down honorably with Jesus in His 
kingdom. 

2. From the same holy nest goes forth another 
flight marked for a mournful destiny. The dear boys 
and girls that were once the heart's delight of loving 
fathers and mothers, but afterward swerved from the 
path of justice, find their way into the jails, the 
brothels, the dens of dissipation; they become the 
defaulters, frauds, robbers, murderers, adulterers, 
sneak thieves, traitors, that make necessary police, 
judge, and prison; their lives end in suicide, sin, de- 
spair. The priest and the public official, standing at 
the river of death, alone see their frightful passage 
over the river, and shudder at the judgment to which 
they have flung themselves. Keeping these tragedies 
in mind, any Christian can understand the action of 
Christ in making marriage a sacrament, and putting 
it forever into the hands of the Church, forever out 
of the power of fickle and sensual societies. The 
Catholic Church for nineteen centuries has cried to 
the scoffing world, the sensual statesmen, the lustful 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. ^01 

law-makers: no divorce. They who marry seek not 
their own pleasure, but the good of the children. 
They are not sybarites, but souls vowed to self-sacri- 
fice. Not the king on his throne has sworn a more 
binding fidelity to his people than they to their 
state; and no vow that ever bound monk and nun 
to God's service could demand as much as parental 
responsibility demands from the father and mother 
of children. The vow may be dismissed, the king 
may resign ; but the relation of parent and child has 
no release in nature, and probably none beyond the 
grave. 

III. What the Parents Should Be. 

1. Home is the child's temple, and the father is its 
priest, vowed to loftiest fidelity. From the home 
altar daily the smoke of his sacrifice must ascend ; 
the sacrifice of his time, labor, thought, prayer ; and 
neither angel nor devil shall lure him one moment 
from his post. The angel of the temple is the 
mother, its caretaker, its sleepless guard, counsellor 
of the priest, and substitute after his death. Between 
them they watch over the growth of the child, prepare 
him for his destiny, and keep from him the knowl- 
edge and the practise of evil. They are ever on the 
watch for the demons that seek the home as beasts 
seek prey, and do battle with every influence that 
threatens the order and sanctity of home. God has 
given them an office akin to His own ; in a sense they 
create their children ; in consequence they become the 
human providence of their children. They owe them 
sound bodies for their hard work in the world ; noble 
predispositions, the inherited taste for the good and 



202 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

honorable; a suitable training of the mind, a sure 
training in religion, and a good start in life. More- 
over, although the law releases the child from par- 
ental dominion at a certain age, and also releases the 
parent from legal responsibility, no law ever releases 
father and mother from the protectorate of love. The 
home should always be open to the child, whether 
saint or sinner. 

2. It is to enable the i^arent to fulfil his vocation 
that society is established. For the father and the 
mother are laws, legislatures, rulers; for them are 
property and fixed societies; for them are church, 
sacrament, and priest. Every protection that can 
secure more powerfully the home against its enemies, 
and maintain the father and mother in a peaceful rou- 
tine of labor, is sought for and upheld by the guard- 
ians of society. For them sages ponder all their 
lives, historians write, philosophers stud^v, soldiers 
fight, priests labor and offer sacrifice. All this is 
needful, for the enemies of the home are numerous 
and fierce. Eemember that the evil side of society 
carries on its work with the same exactness and sys- 
tem as is employed by the good. The gambling-hells 
must have managers and customers when death and 
the devil have claimed their present proprietors and 
patrons ; the supply of fallen women must never dimin- 
ish, let death and dissipation do their utmost; the 
market for hard drinkers, thieves, cheats, fornicators, 
etc., is the busiest in the world; the courts must be 
kept busy, and the jails full. Wliere can all this 
material be got, but in the homes of the nation? 
Therefore, these cruel agents of hell stand always at 
the door waiting for the children of the house ! Alas, 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 203 

what a terrible army of unfortunates fall into their 
hands, passing thence to rottenness, death, and hell ! 

ly. Failuee and Its Judgment. 

1. Where parents are guided by the spirit of God 
their children are an honor to the race ; such as in 
our time were the Vaughan family in England, the 
Barbers in America; such as are the thousands of 
honest souls doing their duty to God and man in every 
town of the land. Their parents knew the duty, the 
responsibility, the danger, the need; and, praying 
for the grace of their state, acted up to grace and 
knowledge both. Alas for those who were ignorant 
of all things, or chose to neglect their holy calling ; 
who gave themselves up to pleasure and their own 
way so as to be the poorest of parents ! Bound to 
give their children sound bodies, they brought to the 
home bodies rotten with drink and dissipation ; owing 
to the children noble instincts, they conceived them 
in the passion of lust and drink, and tainted the 
innocents from the very womb. The example of the 
father and the mother was the daily quarrel, the irri- 
tation of spent nerves, the ungovernable rages, the 
frequent drink stupor, the periodical spree. The 
parents being slaves of drink, or temper, or selfish- 
ness, the children became slaves of the same masters, 
and led lives of riot and disorder; forced to work 
early that the passions of the parent might be fed ; 
deprived of their youth in infancy and made old at 
once; never knowing the father unless as the master 
who beat them, and who had time only to spend upon 
himself the money they had earned, fleeing from the 



204 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

home as from a prison in the end ; without a single 
memory of the parent, but that of shame and horror. 
Such homes, such parents are only too numerous, 
and they breed the material for the world's sad refuse. 
What better result could be looked for from parents 
who were to their children truly the devil's example, 
protection, providence? 

2. What must be the judgment of these faithless 
guardians of the souls of the little ones. God Himself 
has stated it : I will require the souls of the children 
at the hands of the parents, saith the Lord. That is 
enough ; not at the hands of the priest, of the ruler, 
of the lawmaker, of the tempter, but of the father and 
mother ; and the whole world is glad to be rid of that 
heavy responsibility. Why? For twenty years the 
parent has the child close to his very heart, ready, 
willing, loving to be shaped into any form by the 
hands of the two beings nearest and loveliest in his 
eyes of all the people that live. They could have 
made him a saint, yet to-night he is buried in hell, 
the hell of this world's shame, or the hell of eternity. 
And his soul cries for justice against the indifference 
which destroyed him. Not a doubt but he will get 
that Divine justice. Woe to those false souls who 
are to meet it ! The mountains would rest more easily 
on their bodies than the hand of God, directed by the 
prayers of lost children, shall rest upon their souls, 
traitorous souls, in well-deserved judgment. 



QprAger. 



Arid he spoke a 'parable to them, that men ought always to pray^ 
and not to faint. — Luke xviii. 1. 

OUTLINE, 

1. Prayer is the food of the soul, and also the chain by which we bind 

ourselves to God. 

2. By it we acknowledge His goodness and power, and our own depend- 

ence and need. 

3. Yet how few pray with intelligence or heart, except in times of danger. 

4. To pray well we have only to think of the escapes of the past, the 

dangers of the present, the uncertainties of the future. 

5. Or, to remind ourselves of the world's prisons and hospitals, and their 

suffering and often guilty inmates. 

6. Prayer is the common vocation of all and by it the most obscure per- 

son can achieve wonders. 



I. The Obligation and Necessity. 

1. Christians know the obligation of prayer in gen- 
eral, because they have been trained from babyhood 
to address the Almighty Father in the commoner 
forms; it would not be safe to say, however, that the 
majority feel the necessity upon which that obliga- 
tion rests. It is amazing to what culture and intelli- 
gence Catholics will often raise themselves without get- 
ting a glimpse of the reasonable necessity, not to speak 
of the beauty and consolation, of true prayer. They 
can read the forms in an excellent manual with appre- 
ciation of the taste and spirit and genius which dic- 
tated such prayers, they can understand the need of 
deepest earnestness in prayer for delivery from imme- 
diate danger ; but to think of it as a food of the soul, 
as a vivifying current of all our actions, as necessary 

205 



206 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

to the soul as thought is to the mind, or exercise to 
the body, one must not look for such a spirit too often. 

2. This is all the more curious when we remember 
that prayer is, from the standpoint of our share in 
our own salvation, the chief means of union with 
God. Although we have many relationships in this 
world, the one of transcendent importance is with 
God; we are His, and He is ours in a sense more ab- 
solute than can be said of any other relationship. In 
the moment of our creation we stood alone with Him ; 
each moment of life is so completely His gift, and so 
little dependent upon others, that w^e still stand alone 
with Him ; in sickness and death, when all relation- 
ships have faded from our horizon, once more we 
stand alone with Him; finally at the judgment seat 
what other shall stand between us save our own sins, 
and the claims we may have given to hell over our 
souls; and even in the infernal kingdom we shall 
still hold with Him the last relationship of our 
career, outraged father, dishonored son. This in- 
timacy is the basis and the reason why life must be 
one grand prayer. 

3. Since we are reasonable beings and possess free 
\vill, God will have us use these noble endowments in 
our intimacy with Him. They are the gifts which 
make us like to Him. He will have us study Him, 
our Friend, as one friend studies another, and then 
break forth into expressions of love and admiration 
for His beauty; we must study ourselves by the 
lights of faith and reason, and then send out most 
earnest petitions that the littleness and unworthiness 
we have discovered may not intervene between us and 
Him; recognizing the favors showered upon us, we 



PRAYER. 207 

must thank Him clail}^ for His goodness ; and seeing 
the dangers Avhich beset our pathway, we must ask 
for His special help at all times. These efforts of 
reason and will are our share in the work of salva- 
tion, the only tribute He demands of us as Father 
and Friend ; and unless we use them to a sufficient 
extent in life, we shall certainly miss the life eternal. 

II. The Average Fulfilment of the Obligation. 

1. It is humiliating to observe the manner in which 
so many Christians obey this necessity of prayer. 
Once a day the year round the majority fall upon 
their knees to offer up hastily or sleepily, often in 
mortal sin and without the sense of their condition, 
the Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed, and the Act of 
Contrition, which to recite respectfully takes about 
two minutes ; one-half the mornings of the year they 
forget them ; at Mass on Sundays the prayers of the 
book are read; in Lent a few public devotions are 
attended ; in moments of fear and danger some hasty 
petitions are offered up ; all which is their quota of 
prayer in the average year. When it is added that 
habit alone controls these prayers in good part, that 
neither heart nor mind has much share in them, 
that they are often said with irreverent haste, without 
sorrow for sin, and with a tacit determination to con- 
tinue in well-loved sin — one can estimate how effect- 
ively such prayers fulfil the obligation. 

2. As for the higher forms of prayer, meditation, 
and contemplation, what a small percentage of the 
gifted ever practise them, or so much as know their 
names! The ignorant can be excused from their 



208 THE chaplain's sermons. 

practise, yet the ignorant are often better experienced 
in them than the intellectually superior. But there 
seems to be no knowledge of the distinctive kinds of 
prayer among those best fitted by intelligence and 
mental training, by habits of study and reading, for 
their exercise. They can speculate in a philosophi- 
cal or flippant spirit on doctrine; they can enjoy the 
clever pages of "Dion and the Sibyls, "or of "Ben 
Hur," and shed tears over the touching descriptions 
of scriptural scenes in the life of the Saviour; but 
they are unable, because ignorant or unwilling, to 
speculate in the presence of God on these same doc- 
trines, or to call up the scenes of the Master's life 
and leave it to the Holy Spirit to touch the fount of 
tears and to leave indelible impressions. Still, the 
unlettered and the cultured, the fool and the sage, 
alike understand the use of prayer in moments of 
sharp necessity. When death and sickness threaten, 
or fortune slips from the fingers, or any calamity 
approaches, prayer falls naturally from lips that 
have no fluency at other times, bended knees are no 
longer painful, the providence of God stands like a 
mountain to minds who once saw there only a mole- 
hill. Yet there is something nearly ridiculous in the 
skill and fluency of such moments, when compared 
with the dumb-ox habits of the past ; and there can 
always remain a suspicion that such prayers lack 
that directness in their course to God's throne, which 
marks the arrow of the skilful archer to its mark. 

III. The Seceet of Successful Peayer. 

1. This ability to pray in the hour of threatening 
danger points out the way to learning the art of sue- 



PRAYER. 209 

cessful prayer. There is in too many of us a half- 
scepticism as to the success of prayer. We all know 
that the saints had no difficulty in getting what they 
asked for, which we put down to the fact of their 
sanctity; yet it was to all who loved Him, who called 
to Him in love that Christ made the promise : " If 
you shall ask the Father anything in my name He 
will give it you." We shall have no difficulty in 
praying with fervor, often and well, if we feel our 
necessities, spiritual as well as temporal, if we see 
the numberless reasons for extraordinary gratitude 
on our part, if we apprehend the dangers which lie 
around us, if we gauge the value and the power of 
direct and loving appeal to God. Two prayers rise 
almost naturally to every thoughtful heart: the 
prayer of gratitude and the prayer of petition; in 
other words, thanks for what we have received, hum- 
ble asking for coming necessities. It is not always 
clear to the hasty, immature minds of men that they 
have reason to be thankful for any more than the 
ordinary favors of living. Yet if one but looks back 
over that road which he has travelled, whether for 
twenty or for two score years, the mere sight of the 
wrecks that lie in its shadows will send him to his 
knees in heart-broken gratitude ; for before him are 
the skeletons that once were his comrades, whom 
early death, or drunkenness, or apostasy, or lust, or 
avarice, or madness, or sorrow hurled from the path- 
way. The look ahead brings a thousand petitions to 
the lips ; for no eye can pierce the gloom of the road, 
whose sure ending is death, in whose turns lurk sin, 
Satan, and the beasts which ever lie in wait to rend 
the incautious traveller. In the years that are to 
14 



210 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

come what can hinder for us a fate such as overtook 
so many more generous than we have ever been ? 

2. It is astonishing to hear so many say that they 
do not know what to pray for, can think of nothing 
when they get on their knees, but must run to the 
prayer-book. Look around ; see the jails, hospitals, 
insane asylums, poor-houses crowded with inmates. 
Open the journals : read the various accidents, crimes, 
and the like in their columns. The victims of these 
calamities are human beings like yourselves. Why 
should they be chosen for disgrace, suffering, humil- 
iation, and you be left in honor and health? Many a 
time you gave God as great a reason to desert you. 
Pray with violence that none of these horrors may 
touch you or yours. Pray that the suffering of this 
world may get the strength and consolation which 
their condition requires; and as suffering is never 
at an end, when need you leave your knees as its vari- 
ous forms pass before you? Stand at the bedside of 
the sick and dying in imagination, and let your fervent 
petitions, your streaming eyes attest to God your sense 
of pity and brotherly love, prayer reaching where 
your willing hands could not. This is prayer. It 
can be carried on in all times and places, at the Mass, 
in all public services, in the streets, at work, every- 
where. 

IV. The Common Vocation. 

1. Prayer, in fact, may be called the common voca- 
tion of all men. It is not only the special means by 
which every man secures God's grace for himself, 
but for the most of men it is the only means of help- 
ing their brethren. What each one can do for all in 



PRAYER. 211 

actual help is next to nothing. The millions in the 
world are beyond us. Neither time, nor space, nor 
talent suffices for much beyond ourselves; but 
through prayer we reach every soul on the face of 
earth. One earnest petition for the suffering falls 
like balm on every bruised heart, like healing on 
every wounded body. One prayer for the sinners may 
turn a thousand from their evil ways. One prayer 
for the unbaptized infants may get for many the grace 
of baptism ; one praj'er for the dying may open the 
closed gates to the unrepentant. Thus we establish 
by constant prayer for the people a real and glorious 
relationship with souls we know not now, but who 
will surely thank us in eternity. Nor is this the limit 
of our glory. Though not called to preach the gospel 
as priests of the altar, what a mission is open to us 
in prayer for the success of the laborers in the vine- 
yard! Who can say what splendid results might 
spring from daily prayer in behalf of the Pope on the 
throne, of the bishop in his diocese, of the preacher 
in his pulpit? What consolations might not be show- 
ered on the missionaries in remote lands, hidden 
islands, mournful solitudes, from the petitions of 
sympathetic hearts! What spirit, courage, inspira- 
tion might not the great thinker of the church receive 
from the prayer of a simple soul unable to learn, but 
respectful of knowledge. So that in actual influence 
for good the faithful petitioner might not be inferior, 
might really be superior, to many a prince of the 
church, through the numberless graces secured for 
the workers in the vineyard. 

2. And without yielding in the slightest to enthusi- 
asm and its extravagance, it can truly be said that 



212 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

the man of prayer takes his place beside the throne 
of God, and like a great counsellor has a share in the 
government of the world. The world is not so large 
or so intricate in its course that a lively mind would 
not be able to understand and follow its daily develop- 
ment. The Divine will directs its movement. What 
hinders that fervent prayer should not avert disaster 
from one nation, bring peace to another, stability to 
a third? Thus prayer ennobles the common life of 
common souls ; for if it be nobility to share in the 
government of the world, in a permanent and useful 
position, if it be nobility to dispense immense chari- 
ties among the suffering, then the man of prayer is 
noble beyond the patents of men. God Himself has 
lifted him to a glory. " The prayer of the just man 
availeth much, " is His own declaration. And Tenny- 
son expressed the human sense when he wrote : 

"More things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of. 
Wherefore let thy voice rise like a lountain for me night and 

day. 
For what are men better than sheep or goats, 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If knowing God they raise not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those that they call friends. 
For so the great world round is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. " 



(J)tte6tctaft 



Th£ Lord hath sworn and he will not repent : thou art a priest for- 
ever according to the order of Melchisedech. — Psalm cix. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The word priestcraft was invented to express a power misunderstood 

and hated by unbelievers. 

2. The priest is a mystery to them, to the student of history, even to his 

own family, 

3. Yet he is only a human being, and on this fact men have sought to 

destroy him and to root him out from among men. 

4. They forgot that his order is from God, necessary to society, and inde- 

structible. 

5. Therefore men war upon the priesthood of Christ in vain. 

6. It is the glory of the people that they have produced him, 

7. Their first, last, and tenderest memories are connected with him in all 

life's important concerns. 

8. Though particular nations may lose him, he cannot disappear entirely 

from the earth. 



I. The Peiest a Mysteey. 

1. The word priestcraft was invented to express a 
power not well understood by the general world, which 
does not admit the necessity of any priesthood, and 
looks upon the priest as a mere hunter of place and 
honors. It is supposed to express the methods by 
which priests in every age, both the impostor and the 
representative of God, held their influence among the 
people. Therefore its meaning is one of scorn. It 
implies imposture and fraud. Whether used with 
reference to the ancient world, or directed against the 
Christian priesthood, atheistic philosophers intend it 
to describe a parasitical growth of human nature, so 
inveterate that no age has been without it from the 

213 



214 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

beginning, no race has escaped it, no cure has been 
discovered for it. Its most powerful form has existed 
in the Catholic body. Its most vicious representative 
at any time has been the Pope of Kome, who troubled 
the reign of Eoman emperors as bitterly as to-day 
Pope Leo troubles the schemes of the philosophers. 
The ancient tyrant could not remove his spiritual 
competitors by torture, death, vigilance, or statecraft ; 
the modern conspirator is helpless before the 
amiability of Pius IX., Napoleon stumbles over the 
helplessness of Pius VII., a crowd of furious theor- 
ists, backed by Bismarck, Palmerston, Gambetta, 
Crispi, are no match for Leo the Pacificator. The last 
named carries out his policy of success against the 
world as did his predecessors. This success is called 
priestcraft. 

2. The average priest is a mystery to non-Catho- 
lics. Their own ministers or ethical teachers are an 
explicable class. They preach the Gospel or the 
rules of right conduct at their pleasure, and failing 
to achieve real success, or seeing higher honors in 
other ways, they retire to more suitable labors. The 
priest is a priest forever. The average man sees him 
on the streets, and turns to look at him again. He 
has heard of him as the devoted attendant of the 
Catholic people; stories of his fidelity in sickness 
and trouble and disaster have reached him; he is 
known to hear the private confessions of sinners, 
secrets pouring into his ear that no other may know 
until judgment. In his public functions he is arrayed 
with curious and inexplicable splendor, surrounded 
by dignified forms, his approach and departure 
marked by music and ceremony as if he were a king. 



PRIESTCRAFT. 215 

His training is known to have been peculiar and se- 
vere, his celibate life is regarded as monstrous or hy- 
pocritical. Nevertheless he is followed and sustained 
in life by the love and respect of his people ; he is an 
influence for good, felt even by the indifferent, and 
the wicked dread his opposition. For the average 
man these simple details are mysterious. To him the 
priest is a puzzle, a problem. 

3. Even students of social and religious ideas and 
forms are puzzled to account for him. The more 
closely they study his course the more are they 
amazed and bewildered. He appears to them first in 
his training as a Levite, under able teachers making 
the studies and preparation which will fit him for or- 
dination; they see the tremendous exactness of the 
ordination ceremony, its real beauty and power ; and 
the earnestness of all concerned is their wonder. 
They follow him among the people, watch him bap- 
tizing, confirming, confessing, offering up the Mass, 
feeding the people with Divine Bread, marrying, and 
anointing, preaching with authority, admonishing, 
warning, condemning. They see him part of an im- 
mense and unconquerable system, beginning with the 
Pope and ending with the sub-deacon, bound by vows 
never to be recalled, pledged to a work which in 
theory can never end, a soldier who must fight against 
any odds, never give quarter, never accept it, never 
surrender, entering the struggle with evil only to con- 
quer or die. They see him multiplied and varied to 
suit all conditions and sorts of men, all needs, all 
times and places. Finally, most curious of all their 
observations, his type seems to be imperishable, as 
no means of destroying him, though a thousand have 



216 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

been tried, has yet been discovered; and the slaves 
upon whose incredible weakness or stupidity he is 
supposed to thrive, whose freedom is said to be his 
hinge of power, love him, submit with affection to 
his exactions, and are as interested as himself in 
keeping his species alive. To the acutest student the 
priest is no less a mystery than to the unlettered. 

4. He is even a mystery to the household in which 
he was born and bred. From the beginning he seems 
to have been set apart from his brethren. He might 
have had no physical or mental superiority over them, 
might have been inferior in fact; his childhood and 
youth were as theirs in the natural order, he was as 
merry, as fickle, as headlong, as sportive ; but for him 
the things of God had a stronger attraction; what 
others saw to respect and admire, he saw to love and 
long for; when he spoke on such matters his own 
wondered at the spirit of his words and the strength 
of his understanding; he made them feel, perhaps 
long before the idea had touched his soul, that the 
call had been given him, and the Master was drawing 
him to His service. Little by little he drifted away 
from them, and they saw him going with tears and 
joy, as Mary the Mother saw her beautiful Son go 
forth to His mission from the home He had so 
honored and was leaving forever. They would not 
keep him. They could not follow the paths his un- 
derstanding trod. They only knew the justice and 
honor of his going. 

II. The Mysteky Explained. 

1. And yet at best the priest is no more, no less 
than a human being. He has the features and the 



PRIESTCRAFT. 217 

faults of his race, and the limitations of his training 
are strong in him. As the family which gave him to 
the church was good or indifferent, coarse or refined, 
clever or heavy -witted, so will he probably be; as his 
school, college, seminary, and diocese influenced him, 
these influences he will display in his work. In one 
age his order will be superior, in another inferior, 
both in mental and spiritual gifts; in one nation it 
will thrive, in another disappear. This has always 
been so well known that his enemies have based their 
plans for his destruction on the fact that he is a human 
being with human inclination to fraud ; that he has 
his price, or his frailty, and can be bought off, or 
tempted to annihilation, or frightened into obscurity, 
or simply murdered wholesale at maturity, if not 
promptly killed in the Herodian style. And although 
all these plans have been tried, and new ones are 
daily patented, the process goes on because his human 
nature still continues, and human nature is a weak 
and perishable thing. 

2. What the statesmen and his opponents have re- 
fused to take into account is that his priesthood is 
not from himself ; and its powers, their influence, the 
strength which accrues to him from them, are things 
over which he has no absolute control. It is not his 
craft which makes him a giant. There are craftier 
men and classes than he and his to whom centuries 
of opportunity, of cunning, of control brought not a 
tithe of his influence with all their efforts. His power 
is from God, and so the people believe. Kill him, 
and they at once seek another with the same mission. 
To destroy the priest you must really destroy the 
people, or their faith in God. The people gave him 



218 

to God, but they could not confer upon Him his ex- 
traordinary powers. It was Christ who chose and 
honored him. That he forgives sins, offers up the 
awful sacrifice, approves and condemns, receives souls 
into the church, and dismisses them from earth, is 
everywhere along the road to eternal life, at the font, 
in the home, in the assembly, in the senate, at the 
marriage, beside the sick-bed, and finally at the exit 
from the world, is all due to the commission received 
from His Master. If that Master was the King of 
earth and heaven then is this priest what he, and he 
alone, claims to be ; if Christ was a fraud then it is 
only necessary so to prove Him to destroy the priest 
forever. 

3. What is of God men cannot destroy, as old 
Gamaliel told the Sanhedrim long ago. There is no 
element of modern social life which has so persistent- 
ly endured, improved, and developed, in the face of 
the most extraordinary efforts to destroy it, as the 
Christian priesthood, the only priesthood of the civil- 
ized vvorld. " I am not judged by your day," said St. 
Paul. His statement was not a prophecy. It was a 
principle of modern social economy. Hence men war 
upon the priest in vain. They turn his seminaries 
into stables, and drive him out; and the inevitable 
malediction of Christ falls upon them, as a conse- 
quence of the injury to an integral part of the social 
system. It is unnecessary that angels should be 
specially sent to scourge the persecutors. They drive 
the seminarians into the army with the vile purpose 
of making them libertines, and the young men con- 
vert the army; they reject Baptism, and turn the 
priest from the Christian pulpit, forgetting the solemn 



PRIESTCRAFT. 219 

declarations of Christ on these very sins ; they drive 
him from his flock, and when the wolves of rapacity, 
of lust, of avarice, of general lawlessness rush in and 
devour the people, their legislation, their armies, 
their i)olice are powerless to save. On all these 
matters Christ has delivered His judgment. No mat- 
ter how the old world got along without Him, it is 
certain that the new will suffer and die by rejecting 
Him. The priest becomes a mystery only when men 
deny him his rightful place in modern society. 

in. His People's Gloey. 

1. It is the happiness and the glory of the people 
that they have produced him. That he is mysterious 
to the world is only the result of his excellence. The 
plane upon which he lives is the supernatural ; Christ 
has placed him there. He is so far above men, that 
one portion cannot understand him, the other regards 
him with the deepest hope and love. He is the rally- 
ing-point in all danger for them. Before they can be 
robbed of their faith, or their liberties, or invaded by 
the robbers of men, he must be destroyed, or stupe- 
fied, or deceived. It is to win the people from him, 
that clever men have invented the word priestcraft, 
and pretend to pity the victims of his cunning, the 
poor slaves overtaxed to minister to his immoralities. 
Others cry out that they will take their religion from 
him, but not their politics; as if he were the saint in 
one thing, and the cheat in the other. Both within 
and without the church every effort is made to sepa- 
rate him from the people, either to destroy him, or to 
enslave them. 

2. That the attempt is not altogether foolish the 



220 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

history of individual nations makes certain. The 
priesthood of England disappeared before cunning 
persecution, bloody enough, indeed, but marked more 
by the tyranny of king and noble, than by blood. As 
out of the individual heart can go all respect for the 
priest, so can it go out of a nation's heart. But out 
of the world the priest goes not until the second com- 
ing of the Master. Nor even out of a nation while 
his vocation rules his life, let laws, tyrants, schemers 
work as they ^dll. For the place of the true priest is 
in the love of his people, which neither king nor legis- 
lature can destroy. Their first, last, tenderest memo- 
ries are connected with him. It was he who poured 
the saving waters on the little head whose pillow is 
now in the green churchyard ; his blessed hands led 
the little one to the confessional, to the altar of the 
first communion ; his voice first stirred the innocent 
heart to true, conscious love of Jesus ; he blessed the 
lovers entering the married state, and walked with 
them in the joys and sorrows of many a year; his ap- 
peal won the careless sinner, his reproof turned the 
wayward back to right, his consolation dried the tears 
of the penitent. And who can forget that it was upon 
his name the dying called when the last agony had 
seized them ; that their mournful eyes turned from all 
others to look upon this messenger of hope, as he en- 
tered the death-chamber bearing the Lord; that his 
absolution, his anointing, his prayer, and whispered 
word brought peace and resignation to the tortured 
heart; that his last blessing dismissed our beloved to 
the bosom of eternal rest ; that his were the last kind 
and hopeful prayers uttered over the grave of our 
dearest and best. 



PRIESTCRAFT. 221 

3. It is his office to still the storms of passion as 
Christ in the ship calmed the tempest, and relieved 
the distressed disciples. What Christ did then, what 
the great Pope has done before our very eyes in these 
troubled years, the same lies within the power of the 
humblest priest to accomplish for those who call upon 
him. Each in his sphere does the work of Christ. 
If he does not perform miracles in the physical order, 
his power is almost unlimited in the spiritual order; 
and it is the business of all believers to make the 
highest demands upon that power; and so to secure 
peace in their hearts, order and happiness in their 
homes, strength in adversity and sorrow, guidance 
against the multiplying dangers of prosperity. 



In all thy wol'ks remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin. — 
Ecclvs. mi. 4jO. 

OUTLINE. 

1. It is the duty of reasonable beings to keep in mind these four things: 

death, judgment, heaven, and hell. 

2. The world is interested in dulling our minds to these features of our 

destiny. 

3. The Holy Spirit alone can so impress them on our fickle minds as to 

make sin impossible for us. 

4. The world pretends to meet death gayly, but Our Lord found it bitter 

enough to institute a special sacrament for soothing its anguish. 

5. The world makes merry over judgment, yet the Judge is incorruptible, 

fearfully just, and His sentence is eternal, irrevocable. 

6. The world makes merry over finding good company in hell, but good 

company never yet so much as eased a toothache. 

7. The world makes merry over heaven, and even Catholics find little 

comfort in the thought of it. 

8. Serious consideration of these last things should not be put ofiE until 

age has chilled, or disease weakened us. 

9. The boat which must cross the Atlantic is not built a day, or even a 

week, before the voyage begins. 



I. The Geace to Eemember. 

1. Death and judgment await every human being; 
they are the absolute certainties of human destiny, 
and the result of the judgment will be heaven for some 
souls, hell for others. Heaven is worth the winning, 
and, if it were not, hell is surely to be avoided. 
Therefore, it is the part of reasonable beings to 
consider always these four things, Death, Judgment, 
Heaven, and Hell, which the learned call the Four 
Last Things, and to give them their full and natural 
influence on human lives. They are inevitable cir- 
cumstances in each career, the critical incidents for 
immortal souls, and to approach them unprepared or 



THE FOUR LAST THINGS. 223 

blinded, as so many do, is to play the fool and not 
the man in life's great drama. The actions of daily 
life, the words, thoughts, desires, the schemes and 
plans of ambition and selfishness, the very character 
of men, all have a new and startling complexion when 
seen in the light of the four last things. Most of us 
live in an atmosphere of self-deceit in things of the 
soul. Our sins are made little and natural, our in- 
difference is passed off as commendable hardihood, 
and excuses are promptly found for our frequent 
delinquencies. But the moment death turns on its 
awful light the mists of deception roll away, and we 
stand in horror before our own folly, affrighted at the 
number and gravity of our sins. 

2. Satan and the world are, therefore, interested in 
keeping away all consideration of these important and 
inevitable facts from human minds. They feed the 
soul with opiates like these. On Death : why should 
the young or the vigorous trouble themselves about 
that which is so far off, which comes so naturally to 
all men, and which, if considered too often and seri- 
ously, would destroy the pleasure of life? On Judg- 
ment : why worry about it, when God is so good and 
man so weak, that it would be a reflection on His 
mercy to imagine Him judging with the exactness 
and severity of human judges? Heaven: very likely 
it is a beautiful place, and it is to be hoped we shall 
get to it, but at present earth is quite good enough for 
us, and its affairs engross our time and interest. 
Hell : it is a favorite topic with the preachers, and a 
grewsome place, but if we are to go there, what use to 
worry, while we have the consolation of knowing how 
great and fine a crowd will accompany us ; and if it 



224 

comes to a question of fact, who knows anything 
about it anyway? These are the opiates with which 
Satan, the world, and interested teachers feed the mul- 
titude. They really stupefy millions until the last 
moment. These millions come to the great crises of 
their careers as ignorant and unprepared as lambs to 
the slaughter. 

3. Even the thoughtful, who often meditate on the 
last moments of man, fail to be properly impressed 
thereby. Because the grace to be impressed even by 
deep meditation is a supernatural thing, and must 
come directly from God as a gift. We smile at the 
sight of St. Jerome, so overcome at the thought of 
judgment, that he beat his wasted breast with a stone 
until the blood came, because of his sins. We wonder 
what glory St. Paul saw with eyes of faith that he 
counted all things of earth as mere dirt compared 
with it. We read the Saviour's descriptions of hell 
with secret scepticism. We almost laugh at the story 
of one man who read the line of Scripture, " It is ap- 
pointed for all men once to die," perhaps a score of 
times, and at the twentieth reading fled in horror to 
the desert to prepare for the trial which comes to no 
man more than once. Yet here is seen the difference 
between mere mental consideration on these things, 
and the grace of knowing and feeling their true value 
by the light of the Holy Spirit. It should be our 
unceasing prayer to " remember our last end" with 
so vivid and soul-penetrating a remembrance, that 
grievous sin would truly become impossible to us. 



THE FOUR LAST THINGS. 225 



II. RiGPiT Use of the Grace. 

1. There can be no doubt that the baptized receive 
the grace to remember the last end not once, but many- 
times. The duty of remembrance is preached in the 
Christian home, in the pulpit, in the preparation for 
first confession, and first communion, at confirmation, 
at retreats and missions, in books and journals, and 
in the thousand incidents of daily life. But it would 
seem that the very profusion in which this grace is 
offered is one of the reasons why so many make no 
use of it. Ears grow hard to the oft-repeated tale, 
and uneasy minds turn with relief to the opiates 
against the pain of remembrance; so that even the 
just must watch themselves in this regard, and often 
force their comfort-loving natures to stand face to face 
on occasions with the facts of death and judgment, 
heaven and hell. This is simply using the grace of 
remembrance. It is a necessity. Every human being 
feels certain of a long life even when fatal disease has 
claimed him ; the Christian must counteract that fatal 
sense of security by observing the youthful multitudes 
that daily hurry to death. The habit of sin is ac- 
quired by losing the sense of sin's deformity, and 
we grow so accustomed to it that in time our greatest 
enemy becomes our dearest friend; to avoid this 
calamity gaze upon sin in the sad light of death. 
Sinners are only too ready to deceive themselves with 
the hope that death is an easy matter since the whole 
human race must suffer it, and does suffer it with 
unexpected calmness ; yet when one recalls that the 
Lord of life and death found the last moments so try- 
15 



226 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

ing to human nature as to establish a special sacra- 
ment for the strengthening of the dying, can there be 
any doubt of the real anguish of the last end? 

2. The world makes merry with judgment. The 
same world sinks in horror before the courts of men, 
where clever advocates, bribes, influence, can delay 
and often turn aside justice. What chance does the 
court of Christ offer for the advocate and the briber? 
The stupidest mind can brush away with ease all the 
fine sophistries, make hideous the gross pleasantries, 
spent in belittling the last account, by standing for 
one instant before the throne of God, somewhat as it 
shall stand in judgment. Who shall deceive, befog, 
influence, blind this Judge? What advocate will face 
Satan successfully, or pick flaws in the divine law, or 
delay divine justice? Who will spirit away these wit- 
nesses, destroy these records? What friends will 
gather about us to awe the officers of the law, to com- 
fort us, to diminish the sentence, to make pleasant 
the prison? Alone with our sins and their awful con- 
sequences, desired by Satan, without a friend save 
the mercy of God, how foolish, how savage, how blas- 
phemous appears then and now the senseless merri- 
ment of men over the judgment. 

3. The world makes merry with hell. Not only the 
pagan world, but the thoughtless part of the Chris- 
tian world besides. Yet here again a moment's pause 
before that abode of the lost kills the laugh on the 
lip, and silences the foolish word. Though we are 
still out of it, can we say this happiness will last 
another day ? Is it not only too certain that at this 
moment our sinful habits are dragging us closer and 
closer to the pit which now we ridicule, and that if 



THE FOUR LAST THINGS. 227 

death called us to-day it would be to enter the home 
of eternal grief? A few fools pretend to count on the 
number and excellence of the company they will find 
in hell to render their long stay pleasant. Misery 
loves company, but when did company begin to act 
as an anodyne. Not even the presence of the Pope 
can relieve an aching tooth. The hospital patient 
looks to the physicians, not to the company of his fel- 
low-sufferers, for relief. How then will numbers and 
dignitaries lessen the sorrow of hell? The mention 
of hell should excite but two sentiments in us : pity 
for its inhabitants, horror of sin. The first can do 
them no good, it will teach us to respect their misery ; 
the other will send us to our knees, to confession for 
pardon. 

4. The world makes merry over heaven, and asks 
ironically for particulars of its advantages. Even 
good Catholics have the hope, rather than the cer- 
tainty, that it will end all sorrow and make up in 
some unknown fashion for the loss of earthly life, and 
separation from their beloved. They forget that the 
God who made the beautiful world as man's tempo- 
rary residence, also made heaven as his eternal home ; 
and that the beauty of earth is but a shadow of 
heaven's beauty. They forget His own declaration, 
" The eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard, nor hath 
it entered into the heart of man to conceive the glories 
of my dwelling-place." Therefore, the thought of 
heaven should be the comfort of the sick and the 
aged, the protection of the young, the dream of the 
worker in the vineyard, the stimulus and the ambition 
of all Christians. Like a drink of water in the desert 
should be the thought, of this home to the worn travel- 



228 

lers of earth ; and while death and judgment teach us 
to keep a sharp eye on the accounts of the soul, and 
hell gives us a mortal horror of sin, the remembrance 
of heaven will soothe our anxieties, and cheer our 
dark moments. 

III. Eejection of the Gbace. 

1. Many Christians take comfort in putting aside 
these serious considerations, to accept the pagan 
method of regarding death, judgment, heaven, and 
hell. Pagan poets love to picture death as the end 
of a summer day, and the life hereafter as wrapped in 
a gloom which argues inconvenience rather than posi- 
tive suffering for its people. How easily they forget 
all the sad consequences of such teachings. The 
poets have the end of the summer day to themselves, 
for death is awful to man, and he meets it as a calam- 
ity in spite of poetry. Not so with the other three. 
If without strong and positive beliefs, he looks to 
dodge the results of sin; if a Catholic, he hopes 
against hope to find a mercy which will crown him, 
sins and all, or at least diminish the terrors of judg- 
ment and hell. Thousands of Christians practically 
reject the grace to remember their last end in this 
way, and pass through much of life without one seri- 
ous and useful meditation on the four last things. 

2. Perhaps there is pleasure in ignoring the disa- 
greeable until it is thrust upon us ; but what if you 
must choose between disagreeables all the time? 
The man who daily considers his last end will never 
sin, though he suffers from his meditations ; the man 
who refuses to think of the end until it arrives, finds 
himself at death with a rich harvest of sin to reap, 



THE FOUR LAST THINGS. 229 

and only the memories of the happy days that were 
without thought of judgment. It is plain that the 
advantage is with the former. It is good sense if you 
are to cross the Atlantic and must build your own 
boat, not to delay preparation until the day before 
departure. The sinner caught by death unprepared 
suffers more anguish in one instant as he sees with 
the eye of faith what awaits him, than the holy soul 
whose life was shadowed by its destiny ever suffered 
in the whole of its faithful career. 



C^e ^ofg (Jtdme of %uub. 

Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from 
their sins. —Matt. i. 21. 



OUTLINE. 

1. Catholics are often accused of childishness in their love of Christ. 

2. There can be no puerility in true love. 

3. Love for the name of Jesus is love for Himself. 

4. The power of a great name over the imagination, 

5. The power of a loved name over the heart. 

6. The power of a home name over the emotions. 

7. The awful power attached to the name of Jesus. 

8. The pride with which His followers utter It. 

9. The love which has honored It from the beginning. 

I. — The Feast of the Holy Name. 

1. A COMMON charge against Catholics, and a rather 
glorious one in fact, is that their love for Christ has 
become utterly childish with time ; that the simplicity 
of love has been sacrificed to the fantasies of saints 
and peoples, and instead of worshipping the true 
Christ, Catholics have lost sight of His Divine Per- 
son in a multitude of human conceits, and are wor- 
shipping His garments, cross, names, and physical 
perfections. Thus, our critics point to the public 
devotion to the Precious Blood as an instance of their 
charge ; then to the devotion to the Sacred Heart, to 
the Holy Face, so popular in France, and to the de- 
votion paid to the garments of Our Lord, the instru- 
ments of His Passion, the Santa Scala in Rome, and 
other memorials of Him. Among the sects no such 

230 



THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS. 231 

devotions are to be found. Tliey liave not worried 
over the true cross, tliey hardly believe that anything 
belonging to the Christ of Judea is in existence, they 
ridicule the crusades and their object of rescuing the 
Holy Laud from the hands of the infidel. They claim 
that they worship Christ in His simplicit}^ unadorned 
by Oriental gewgaws, and reverence all things relating 
to Him in reverencing Him alone. 

2. Nature condemns their contention and com- 
mends us. The mother not only loves her child, but 
everything that has touched him : his childish gar- 
ments, his toys, his old schoolbooks, photographs of 
his infancy, his youth, and his age. The country 
cannot get too many personal memorials of Washing- 
ton, and has built museums to hold them ; his uni- 
forms, his letters, his swords, his furniture, his pic- 
tures ; a handkerchief stained with his blood would 
be a highly prized relic ; artists are never tired se- 
curing the various paintings of his fine face and 
figure; and pilgrimages are made to his home of 
Mount Yernon, where everything is preserved as he 
left it, for the veneration of the patriotic. Many a 
hero, whose body rested far from his native land, has 
sent home the heart which loved his country to death ; 
and the people have thought it honorable to pay 
public respect to this precious relic of their brave 
defender. What is all this but the natural expression 
of man's affection? And how completely it justifies 
Catholic devotion to our Lord and all the trifles con- 
nected with Him ! It can be questioned if they are 
trifles. There is no puerility in true love. The old 
legend tells us that Our Lord often rose in the night 
to make sure that His Apostles were covered from the 



232 THE chaplain's sermons. 

damp night air. In the Gospel itself we are assured 
that He cares for us even to the hairs of our heads, 
which are all numbered. It is the characteristic of 
true and deep love that nothing connected with the 
object of love can be trifling or uninteresting to the 
lover. 

3. Here, then, is the justification of Catholic devo- 
tion to all things connected with Our Lord and His 
Saints. This feast of His Holy Name gives us the 
opportunity to display our deep love for Him in a 
different fashion from the feast of the Precious Blood, 
for instance. The name is the man. It is the sum- 
ming up in one word of all that he is to himself and 
to us, it is his essence. It covers all that he has 
been to us in the past, and it will signify all that he 
may be to us in the future. When human emotion 
has exhausted language, look, and gesture to express 
love for another, we murmur over and over the name 
of our beloved. What sublime pathos, what awful 
sadness in the cry of David : " Oh, Absalom, my son ! 
Oh, my son, Absalom." Human sorrow could ex- 
press no more. The highest love for Christ finds no 
utterance so expressive as that of His Name. Hence, 
the admirable wisdom of the Church which fixes a 
day for the special veneration of the name of Jesus. 

II.— The Power of a Name. 

1. A name is something more than word, and a 
word is a thing of power. What awesome magic lies 
in a great name, that its mere utterance, like a match 
to a dry forest, can set on fire the souls of men, and 
flood their imaginations with radiance. De Quincey 



THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS. 233 

tells us that in his opium dreams the mention of the 
word "consul" set him in a great terror: for he 
seemed to hear the tread of thundering legions on the 
hea\dng earth, and his soul was overwhelmed by the 
seeming approach of the splendid power of Rome. 
The name of Napoleon stirs the commonest soul, and 
the mind sees in the name, as the eye might in a 
kaleidoscope, the shifting scenes of camp and court 
and council, hears in it the thunders of battles, and 
the shouts of conquering legions, is dazzled by the 
great height of glory and saddened by the depth of 
disgrace, to which the genius of man can come. The 
name of Dante is to the ear like the powerful music of 
a celestial orchestra, which sounds the joy of heaven, 
the hope of purgatory, and the despair of hell. The 
name of Washington is like a trumpet to the ears and 
hearts of all who long for the freedom of the nations, 
and the elevation of all peoples to the highest human 
liberty. 

2. If great names have such power over the imagi- 
nation, loved names have a still greater power over 
the heart, though they be only the heroines of famous 
poems like "Evangeline," or the idols of foreign na- 
tions like Joan of Arc. What tears have not been shed 
over the sadly sweet story of the Acadian girl who 
sought her lover for years, only to find him at his 
death-hour, and to hear but one utterance from his 
dying lips. She is the symbol of human effort, 
human hope, and human suffering: and the world 
loves her, because its suffering, though sung by no 
poet, is as keen and as hopeless as hers. The world 
loves Joan of Arc in spite of her traducers, in spite of 
the fears of the unbelieving, that her popularity may 



234 

mean much for Christianity in the people's hearts; 
because her career is typical of the career of unselfish 
leaders: youth, genius, power, great-heartedness, 
immolated, burned at the stake, that greed and in- 
iquity may thrive. 

3. Yet both the great and the loved names of his- 
tory and literature do not appeal to all, because not 
known to all; and their power is small compared 
with the power exercised upon us by the home names 
dear almost without exception to every human heart : 
the names of father and mother, sister, brother, 
friends, children. The finest lines that the poet 
Holmes penned, the most touching and sweet, are the 
stanza from " The Last Leaf" : 

The mossy marbles rest 
On the lips that he has prest 
In their bloom ; 

And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 
On the tomb. 

There does not beat a human heart, which these sim- 
ple home names do not affect. Custom may take the 
edge off affection and remembrance, and the dead 
may be quickly forgotten, but when dreams overtake 
us, these old names well up from the depths of sel' 
fishness and cross the unconscious lips ; when sick- 
ness banishes the shams of life, and tears off the 
mask of self-deception, old, dry lips, withered with 
the gibberish of trade or scarred by blasphemies of 
sin, murmur the sweet names of childhood and youth 
and innocence ; and when death is about to free the 
poor soul from its earthly tenement, the dying " bab- 



THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS. 235 

ble o' green fields" and call for the mother, whose 
loving hand and voice could chase awsiy pain and 
fear and death, as the physicians of all time never 
will. Such is the power of a name, of a merely 
human name, whose owner turns to ashes and sinks 
into oblivion. 

III.— The Power of the Holy Name. 

1. What, then, must not be the power of the sweet- 
est human name in history, which linked with it the 
Divine — the Name of Jesus. The Scriptures exhaust 
language in describing It. St. Paul says: "He 
humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, 
even to the death of the cross ; for which cause God 
also hath exalted Him, and hath given Him a name 
which is above all names : that in the name of Jesus 
every knee should bow, of those that are in Heaven, 
on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue 
should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the 
glory of God the Father." — Phil. ii. As a strong 
wind sweeping over the world bends forest and flower, 
upturns the deep, kisses and cools the cheeks of men, 
and makes wonderful harmonies and terrifiying dis- 
cords along remote shores and in the depths of moun- 
tains, so the utterance of this great Name stirs the 
depths of human interest and emotion, rises to heaven 
and draws sweet acclaim from the angels, sinks to 
heU amid the tears of the lost, and touches the deeps 
of the infinite nature of God. What a wonderful and 
sublime thought ! that the voice of a child, breathing 
this name upon the air, transcends the mightiest 
forces of nature in actual power ! 

2. Is it any wonder that His followers have always 



236 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

taken such pride in this glorious name that they do 
nothing, ask nothing, accomplish nothing, except 
through Its invocation? All the splendid prayers of 
the Church close with some reference to the Name of 
Jesus ; the Apostles worked all their miracles of na- 
ture and grace through this beloved Name ; the mar- 
tyrs endured their bitter sufferings in Its strength. 
Its utterance was not only their consolation but their 
pride. With what pride Americans utter the name of 
Washington, Frenchmen the name of Napoleon, Ital- 
ians the name of Dante, Englishmen the name of Mil- 
ton; yet how insignificant their emotion compared 
with that holy pride which stirs the Catholic heart 
in uttering the Name of the Master. How aston- 
ished were the pagans of old when their idols fell in 
pieces before Its utterance from the lips of a martyr, 
when even the great empire crumbled under It. Yet 
why should not mankind feel the deepest pride in It, 
when the Eternal God speaks that Name with all pa- 
ternal pride ? " This is my beloved Son in whom I 
am well pleased." 

3. With what love It has been uttered since that 
moment when the Angel announced to St. Joseph the 
name of the Saviour ! What mother ever spoke the 
name of a beloved child with the love that illumined 
the heart and lips of Mary, who has been uttering 
the Name of her Son with ever-increasing love for 
twenty centuries? The angels of heaven have cho- 
rused her sweet invocations, and the saints and sin- 
ners of earth have swelled the wonderful strain of 
human and angelic love. The millions of Christians 
that have died in holiness or repentance spent their 
latest breath on the Name of Jesus, their countersign 



THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS. 237 

for the great camp of heaven, their farewell to the 
world. Even the pagan world has loved It, for the 
sake of the most perfect Man that time has given 
us. All the prophecies have been fulfilled concern- 
ing It. " And his name shall be called Wonderful, 
Counsellor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world 
to come, the Prince of Peace." — Isa. ix. What re- 
proach shall then be uttered against the Church of 
God that it celebrates by every means in its power 
the glory of Christ's Name: that it sets the world in 
motion two or three times in a year in order that men 
may praise with serious and penitent hearts the Holy 
Name of their Leader and Saviour? Is it not a sign 
of degeneration and of cooling faith among the sects 
that they have no feasts of this kind, and that they 
scorn them? If the fair-minded went searching for 
that body of Christians which showed most love for 
the Son of God, is it not likely that they would stop 
with those who exhaust human resources in praising 
their Master, rather than with those who have no 
public honors for the events of His career? Let us 
all, then, adore and love with ever-increasing vene- 
ration and respect the Holy Name of Jesus. " For 
there is no other name under heaven given to men 
whereby we must be saved." — Acts iv. 



t^t Otartieb ^idit 



A man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: 

and they shall be two in one flesh. — Gen. ii. 2^. 

This is a great sacrament, hut 1 speak in Christ and in the Church. 

—Ephes. V. 32. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The main object of marriage is the propagation of the human race. 

2. The high motives and serious preparation necessary for marriage. 

3. The blessings conferred upon those who receive it. 

4. Parents should bring forth their children in purity and sobriety. 

5. In the children their own youth is renewed. 

6. And all their energies are deepened. 

7. The necessity of absolute devotion to the duties of marriage. 

8. The heavy responsibility resting upon the married. 

9. And the rewards with which heaven and earth acknowledge their fidelity. 

I.— Honorable Condition of the Married. 

1. The world to-day is as busy as it was in ancient 
times trying to forget the obligations of the married. 
If it could have its way, the marriage state would 
have no other obligations than the pleasure and com- 
fort of those who enter upon it. Perhaps at no time 
in history has the true aim of marriage been so per- 
sistently ridiculed as in our day ; when whole nations 
have taken it upon themselves to control and limit 
the natural increase of the race without regard to the 
laws of nature and the laws of God. The main ob- 
ject of marriage is the propagation of the human race. 
It is a high and honorable office which the young 
man and woman accept, uniting their human desti- 
nies. They are not only to be a comfort and support 



THE MARRIED STATE. 239 

to each other, but they are to provide the nation with 
the workers, the rulers, the thinkers, who are to fill 
all the places now occupied by the workers, the 
rulers, and the thinkers of this moment. They are 
to give the great Christian Church its holy people of 
the next generation, its devoted religious, cultured 
priests, and holy bishops. And they are to provide 
heaven with its army of saints, baptized in the blood 
of the Son of God, and ministering to His glory for 
all time. What nobler task could man take up for 
his own honor and the honor of his country ? 

2. Its dignity requires, therefore, that men should 
enter upon the married state only after serious 
thought, careful preparation, and with the highest 
motives. As it is the condition intended by God for 
the grand majority of mankind, He has given men 
and women a strong natural love for it ; not simply 
for its physical pleasures, but for its moral strength, 
its healthful companionship, and its natural fruits, the 
beautiful children. We have only to look out upon 
the pagan world to see the shameful results of mar- 
riage reduced to the level of practical concubinage, 
even where the law has set a sort of temporary sanc- 
tion on it, temporary because the divorce court can 
soon do away with the sanction of the law. With the 
pagan world marriage is a matter to be deferred to the 
last moment, its sensuality and personal comfort are 
the only bonds which are to keep the married in one 
flesh, and the children are thought of only as pets 
for the amusement of the parents, limited in number 
and trained accordingly. This view of marriage has 
obtained a hold on too many Catholics; and, as a 
consequence, we see the number of the unmarried 



240 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

among us daily increasing, and the vicious habits of 
the pagans as well. 

3. The dignity and importance of the married state 
are such as to deserve from God particular and nu- 
merous blessings on the parents and their offspring. 
In the natural order this union of the man and 
woman gives mental and moral balance to the mar- 
ried pair. Their mutual love widens and deepens 
their sympathies, and their range of thought; their 
new responsibilities cause them to take more serious 
views of life and its burdens ; the young man becomes 
more truly a man and a citizen, and the young woman 
more devoted; and both take a deeper interest in 
their own nature and destiny. In the spiritual order 
they get a better understanding of religion, of its 
deep meanings, and of the bearing it has upon the 
happiness of man. This is true only of the decently 
married, of those to whom the bond of marriage is 
perpetual, and in whose horizon there is no divorce 
court. Hence, the Holy Spirit has said: "House 
and riches are given by parents : but a prudent wife 
is properly from the Lord." — Prov. xix. And again: 
" He that hath found a good wife, hath found a good 
thing, and shall receive a pleasure from the Lord." 
Prov. xviii. 

II.— The Feuit or Marriage. 

1. The natural fruit of marriage is the children. 
What a miserable tree is that which bears no fruit, 
or only a short and sickly crop ! Nature gets rid of 
these trees at its earliest moment, for it abhors the 
ungenerous and unfruitful; and the wretched crowd 
whose days are made shameful in their efforts to es- 



THE MARRIED STATE. 241 

cape children have other punishments in store than 
those of the judgment. Nature will avenge herself, 
if the tree does not bear an abundant and vigorous 
fruit. Therefore, the next duty of the married, after 
their duties to each other, is the bringing forth of 
healthy children. We have all learned in these days 
of scientific investigation of the immense influence 
exercised in various ways by the parents upon the 
children ; how they communicate to them not only 
their physical peculiarities, perfections, and weak- 
nesses, but also in some degree their mental quali- 
ties and mental deficiencies, their tendencies both 
good and bad. How far they do this we cannot tell 
as yet ; but enough is known to warn the parents that 
they should conceive, and bear, and bring forth their 
children in sobriety, in purity, in chastitj^, in con- 
tinence, and in prayer. Alas, what a multitude of 
unfortunate children are conceived and born in the 
swamps of drunkenness, lechery, anger, and hatred. 
" The children will complain of an ungodly father, 
because for his sake they are in reproach." — Ecclus. 
xli. 

2. The effect of children upon parents is of won- 
derful beauty and power. They renew their own 
lives in the little ones. We are all forever wishing for 
the chance to live our lives over again. The married 
with lovable children have no trouble in getting their 
wish without the effort of another birth and another 
career. They see their own infancy, childhood, 
youth, and maturity repeated enjoyably in their 
children. Their understanding of many things in 
their past life becomes deeper. They see for the first 
time the love and care once lavished upon them by 
16 



242 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

their own parents, the depths of sorrow and joy 
touched by these faithful guardians in training them 
to be fathers and mothers in their turn; and their 
hearts are roused at last to a real love for their own 
parents. Happy for them if no hardness and in- 
gratitude rise to reproach them for the past. A 
certain exaltation fills the soul of the parent in seeing 
his own flesh and blood in another personality than 
his own ; a feeling akin to that of the author who sees 
the creations of his own brain living in the printed 
book, or treading the stage. " Nine things that are 
not to be imagined of the heart have I magnified, and 
the tenth I will utter to men with my tongue : a man 
that hath joy in his children, and he that liveth and 
seeth the fall of his enemies." — Ecclus. xxv. 

3. And what strength the possession of children 
puts into a parent's right arm, what immense energy 
into his soul. He has the moral and physical endur- 
ance of five men, and she of five women, for the little 
ones must be fed for earth and heaven. A deeper in- 
sight is given the father and mother into the things 
that are and the things of the future, because they 
must see the road which the little ones are to travel. 
A deeper reliance on God and His providence fills 
their hearts, because they feel for the first time their 
own helplessness fully to guard their children. 
Thus, their stature increases with their responsi- 
bilities and their love, and they become real pillars 
of the world, which must ever lean upon such as 
these. Compare with them the breeders of pet 
animals, which yet may prove to society fierce 
wolves ; the parents who train two or three children 
for their own amusement, and for the greater misery 



THE MARRIED STATE. 243 

of the world. " A son ill-taught is the confusion of 
his father; and a foolish daughter shall be to his 
loss." — Ecclus. xxii. 3. 



III. — Kesponsibilities. 

1. A state to which is attached so much dignity 
and so much happiness cannot but have its responsi- 
bilities. All can see the devotion necessary from the 
man to the woman, from the wife to the husband, 
from the parents to the children. The husband must 
take the lead in self-sacrifice, as the head of the 
household ; but too often he is a very bad second. 
How often he forgets that his wife is not the house- 
hold slave, and allows her to struggle alone with the 
task of training the children, when the aid of a good 
servant would make the serious difference between 
the work of the drudge and the work of the mother. 
" Keep then your spirit, and despise not the wife of 
thy youth," says the prophet, Mai. ii. 15. The 
wife is the rivet of the household, the strong rivet 
which holds its parts together. Without her the 
home is impossible, for men are helpless creatures, 
simple and rough of nature, and incapable of training 
children. Man was made the head of the household, 
because his courage and strength make him the 
natural pro\dder and protector for the family in the 
rough battle with nature and the world's evil. The 
wife's devotion must be of that character which will 
warm his simple and savage heart into its highest 
expression of love. " Let women be subject to their 
husbands, as to the Lord."— Ephes. v. 22. The 
united love, labor, and watchfulness of both are re- 



244 THE chaplain's sermons. 

quired to train the children, and to prepare them for 
their journey in life. The souls as well as the bodies 
of the children are in their power. They can shape 
them as they choose. They are the garrison of the 
fort which holds the children of the king, and never a 
fort had such a host of besiegers ; for the armies of 
them that live by the souls of men lay siege to it night 
and day in the hope of securing the slaves for the 
brothel, the gambling-hell, the dark dens of infamy 
in the world. 

2. What lofty devotion is necessary on the part of 
the parent to train the children on the one hand, and 
on the other to guard them from their prowling ene- 
mies ! What a heavy responsibility to society, which 
must have its workers, and must lessen its criminals, 
to the Church which must have its saints, and to 
Christ who must have His kingdom. Yet upon the 
father and mother falls this grave burden. Is it any 
wonder that Christ raised marriage to the dignity of 
a sacrament, and that the Church denies to any 
human society, whose members profess the faith, any 
power over the bond of marriage. The state never 
yet claimed sole jurisdiction over marriage unless to 
degrade, and then to destroy the bond, and never 
showed itself able to lift marriage above its pagan 
conditions. How miserable to-day is the state of 
marriage in the United States, where divorce is get- 
ting to be nearly as common as marriage ! What rot- 
tenness must be eating at the vitals of the nation when 
the leaders permit the race-nest to be so shamefully 
befouled, the parents to be encouraged in sensual 
pleasures, and the children exposed to the training of 
the street. 



THE MARRIED STATE. 245 

3. The rewards of those who in the married state 
faithfully fulfil their obligations are deservedly very 
great. Happy in each other's love for long years, 
the husband and wife remain lovers to the end, getting 
out of life all the joy that properly belongs to it. 
Their age is made honorable by children of worth, 
whose affection and integrity and faith are the true 
riches of the parent. Society is their grateful debtor 
for members of high character, and church and state 
offer them deep gratitude for the blessing of worthy 
citizens and believers. Finally, they have Jesus 
Christ Himself for their debtor, inasmuch as they 
have given to Him recruits for His kingdom. They 
enjoy no public honor, and statues are not erected to 
them ; but many a hero, poet, genius, whose name is 
sweet in the world's ears, has been of less use to his 
fellows than the faithful parents of wise children. 
What comfort and courage should not these reflections 
bring to the tired hearts of struggling parents. Their 
reward is in heaven indeed, but the pure joys which 
come to them here amid the " burden of the day and 
the heats" are worth the labor and the pain. 



tu e^ifb. 



Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for 
of such is the kingdom of God. — Mark x. 14. 



OUTLINE. 

1. The tender relationship between parents and children. 

2. The care of the children's physical growth. 

3. The cultivation of good habits and manners. 

4. Their naental training must begin at home. 

5. And be continued in carefully selected schools. 

6. Their innocence and virtue are often sold for an education. 

7. The soul's training more necessary than any other. 

8. The parents have all the responsibility in this matter, 

9. And too many carry it with unnatural ease. 



I. — The Child's Body. 

1. Theee is no relationship so tender and so inti- 
mate as that which exists between the parent and the 
child. It has a marked resemblance to that between 
the Creator and His creature, because the parent 
brings forth the child, which is utterly dependent 
upon him for sustenance and development. There- 
fore, upon the parent rests the obligation of securing 
to the child all the elements of a sound training for 
his career here and hereafter. It is a heavy respon- 
sibility. It means great labor, great devotion, and 
great self-denial for the father and the mother. At 
the same time it means great reward. The clay in the 
hands of the sculptor is not so utterly at his disposal 
as the child in the hands of its parents. For twenty 
years they may do as they will with him ; on one con- 

246 



THE CHILD. 247 

dition, that they do it in the purest love. He is a free 
being, and can be bound by ties more enduring than 
death, if these bonds be forged in love ; and this love 
must be expressed, not only in actual care, and in 
unseen tendernesses, but in loving expressions, looks, 
services, and embraces, up to the moment of the 
child's departure into the world. It is the won- 
derful feature of parental power, that for twenty 
years it has the child completely at the mercy of 
love. 

2. The parent's love should have foresight, and be 
guided by knowledge. The little body, now such a 
delight to father and mother by its tender beauty, 
must carry its owner a long way into the world. The 
parent should see that it grows vigorously, with grace 
of shape and movement. How important this is can 
be seen from a glance at any collection of young peo- 
ple. What negligence, ignorance, and difference on 
the part of the parents have produced so many de- 
formities! Deformities not serious, of course, but 
ungraceful, and always painful to their possessors: 
the rounded shoulders, crooked legs and ankles, poor 
shapes, gawkish motions and gestures, unhealthy 
skins, muddy complexions, weak eyesight, wretched 
digestions, rough voices, deficient hearing, and many 
other regrettable things. It is the duty of the parents 
to guard against these misfortunes. They must watch 
the little bodies daily from the cradle, observe their 
movements and growth, hinder the approach of the 
slightest deformities, cultivate the natural graces, and 
make heroic efforts to secure to their children a good 
set of physical qualities, the use of perfect organs. 
This means labor and thought. It means good food, 



248 

long sleep, plenty of air and exercise, and loving train- 
ing. When we see the care which farmers, and other 
owners of animals, lavish on horses, cattle, dogs, 
fowls, pet birds, and the like, it is painful to witness 
the extraordinary indifference to the proper physical 
care of children. 

3. The children have a right to better training on 
this point than even the blooded stock. In addition 
they have a right to sound training in human habits 
and gentle manners. There is no reason why the 
poorest child should not have as fine habits of body, 
and as gentle manners, as any child of the rich. If 
the children of the workers are without these things, 
it is because their parents were without them, at- 
tached no value to them, and could not give either 
example or instruction to the little ones. Poverty is 
beautiful in itself, and Christ has made it more beau- 
tiful still : but the careless poor make it hideous by 
the lack of order, cleanliness, and beautiful simplicity 
in their homes, lives, and manners. How much better 
for human happiness, if parents thought less of per- 
sonal comfort, money-making, getting on in the world, 
and more of decency, good habits, and fine manners. 
"Is not the life more than the meat; and the body 
more than the raiment?" — Matt. vi. 

II.— The Child's Mind. 

1. More than clothes, food, position, is the personal 
character of the man. The aim of the parent should 
be to give the child a strong character. While secur- 
ing to Him a healthy and graceful body, the mind 
should not be neglected, and its first training should 



THE CHILD. 249 

come from father and mother. The mother will ever 
have the larger share in developing the mind of the 
child, but the father has no right to neglect his part 
in the beautiful work. And the first step in awaken- 
ing that mind is to give the little one a reflective cer- 
tainty of the parental love, tenderness, mercy, and 
justice. It already has the instinctive certainty, and 
turns to father and mother promptly for protection, 
consolation, caress, and aid. It babbles all its con- 
fidences in their ears, and finds no embrace so attrac- 
tive and sustaining as in their arms. Why should 
this happy and natural union ever decay? Why is it 
that, in after years, so msiiiy children find any ear more 
suitable for the thoughts of their hearts than the 
parental, any embrace more thrilling than father's or 
mother's? Parents and children drift apart with the 
years, mostly because the parent has lost deepest in- 
terest in the child. See that you do better. Never 
let go of your child's heart. Never let any human 
being come between you, until the moment arrives 
when in the course of nature he must leave father and 
mother for higher duties. 

2. The best training of the mind is not that which 
is received in school, but at home. This fact is fairly 
forgotten by the parents of our day. So fine are the 
advantages of education in this country, so numerous 
the schools and colleges and universities, so easy the 
terms, that few regard any more the education of the 
home. The grand majority of our educational insti- 
tutions are merely purveyors of information: they 
rarely educate. And it is a frequent fact with them, 
that while they turn out people well informed on law, 
medicine, and similar topics, they rarely turn out a 



250 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

lady or a gentleman, a fine character, a deeply relig- 
ious soul, a robust honesty, unless such things came 
to them from the homes of the land: nay, it is an ab- 
solute certainty, that they have often honored the 
human pig with degrees, and converted lady and 
gentleman, honesty and piety into their opposites. 
They tell parents frankly that their purpose is to 
convey information, not to educate human beings. 
Therefore let the child's mental training be seriously 
carried on at home, while the schools are cramming 
him with information. Have the shelf of good books, 
and the clean paper and magazine at hand, and let 
father talk of the history of the time and the great 
deeds and movements of the past. It is the home 
which makes the true scholar. 

3. We are so weighted down with varieties of 
information by the schools, that the ambition of 
parent and child is to swallow tons of information 
and not to develop a fine character. No serious 
attention is paid to the character and fitness of 
teachers, books, subjects, associates. The child is 
not taught directly the value of religion, honesty, 
truthfulness, sobriety, purity, manliness, but is sup- 
posed to have these virtues as his father's child. The 
boy and girl are flung into the public school, then 
into the academy ; after, they may be sent, the youth 
to the distant college, the girl to the distant finishing 
seminary. That is all the parents know about it. 
More than one father and mother have paid for the 
information furnished to their children, not only by 
large sums of money, but with their children's very 
souls. " And what shall it profit a man if he gain the 
whole world, and lose his own soul?" That price is 



THE CHILD. 251 

too liigli for all the information that ever was or ever 
will be given by universities to men. 

III.— The Child's Soul. 

1. The vanity of parents, often, too, their careless- 
ness and laziness, will lead them into all sorts of mis- 
takes and blunders and deficiencies in training the 
bodies and minds of their children, if they do not 
always keep in view their terribly imperative duty to 
the souls of the little ones. Here is Our Lord's own 
statement on this matter : " And he that shall receive 
one such little child, in my name, receive th me. But 
he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that 
believe in me, it were better for him that a mill-stone 
should be hanged about his neck, and that he should 
be drowned in the depth of the sea." — Matt, xviii. 
How many a wretclied parent found no meaning in 
these words until his lost children and his wrathful 
Judge repeated them for him in judgment. The soul 
of the child is the chief interest of the parent. It re- 
mains when the body, the mind, information, and 
education alike, have crumbled into dust. It is of 
his work for this soul that the parent will have to 
give the longest account at the last moment before' 
eternity. 

2. The soul of the child is the very hinge of the 
parent's duty. His responsibility is heavy, and for 
this reason Christ left abundant and special helps for 
parents in the administration of the Church. The 
Sacraments seem almost to have been established for 
the parent alone ; for the way of the child on the earth 
is made beautiful by the four sacraments which he 



252 THE chaplain's sermons. 

receives in his infancy and youth, and through their 
gracious influence the parent's work is lightened and 
made delightful. Nature also is most kind to the 
father and mother. The child has a natural love of 
beauty and order, imitates closely his parents, takes 
up their likes and dislikes, and enjoys a heavenly in- 
nocence which ordinary love and care can preserve 
undefiled for many years. Now, if the father and 
mother make home the child's temple, dress it in holy 
pictures, keep its atmosphere clear of dispute, pro- 
fanity, vulgarity, and redolent of sweet words and 
prayers ; if they study each playmate, each teacher, 
each book, and each school, with regard to the child's 
soul ; if the desire to see him honest, truthful, pious, 
frank, brave, refined, and gentle-mannered surpasses 
their desire to see him laden with the information of 
the schools; if their love for him passes the bounds 
of earth, and looks to the enjoyment of him in eter- 
nity—then nature and grace will join with them in 
shaping a being who will be the joy of earth and of 
heaven. 

3. Alas! how far from this ideal is the average 
child of the time. You have only to listen and ob- 
serve in their company to describe the home in which 
they lived : its members were loving enough in their 
secret hearts, perhaps, but temper and rough lan- 
guage were more frequent than expressions of love ; 
the family troubles were the commonest topics of 
conversation, varied by discourses from the father on 
the value of riches, the need of them, the great efforts 
that ought to be made for securing them, the scorn of 
men for those who had them not, the consideration 
they win from the world ; but rarely was heard a word 



THE CHILD. 253 

on religion, on the value of tlie Christian life, on the 
dignity of an honest, truthful. God-fearing soul, on 
the beauty of life as God's precious gift, on the great 
events of time and eternity, which constitute the real 
greatness of man. In such homes there is no true 
training of body, mind, and soul for the children. 
Nevertheless, the silly parents wonder in after-years 
why their ill-formed offspring went so thoroughly and 
suddenly to the bad ! They have good reason to fear 
that Heli's fate shall be theirs. "And the Lord said 
to Samuel : Behold, I do a thing in Israel, and who- 
soever shall hear it, both his ears shall tingle. In 
that day I will raise up against Heli all the things I 
have spoken concerning his house : I will begin, and 
I will make an end. For I have foretold unto him, 
that I will judge his house forever, for iniquity ; be- 
cause he knew that his sons did wickedly, and did not 
chastise them." — 1 Kings, iii. 



^ettt ^nnba^. 



He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. — 

1 Cor. XV. 4" 

Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more; death shrill 

no more have dominion over Him. — Bom. vi. 9. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The Church's power over men is seen in the attention aroused by its 

great festivals. 

2. This power was first exercised by the Apostles. 

3. And has come down to us as the inheritors of their faith and hope. 

4. Men ask at the grave: Is this the last of man? 

5. Standing at the door of death they cry out: Is return from darkness 

possible? 

6. Parting from life's consciousness they ask: Shall we be ourselves again ? 

7. And Christ gave answer to all by His Resurrection. 

8. Faith in His return from the dead has renewed mankind. 

9. We should exult on this day in the splendid destiny that awaits us. 



I. — The Chukch and the Eesurrection. 

1. From the human standpoict it is marvelous what 
power the Church has over the minds of men, that in 
what are called the days of her decay she can arouse 
so much public interest in her great festivals. At 
Christmas she announces to the world that the Son of 
the living God became a man, and at once the critics 
respond. How can God become man? Neither the 
Church nor the people under her shadow give heed to 
the critics, but proceed to celebrate the birthday of 
Christ. On Good Friday the Church announces the 
death of Jesus Christ, and at once the critics respond : 
How can God die? Nevertheless the world weeps, 
puts on sackcloth and ashes, and makes some attempts 

254 



EASTER SUNDAY. 255 

to do penance for its sins. On this day the Church 
proclaims the return of the God-Man from the dead, 
and the critics respond again : The dead return never. 
While they are proving their assertion the Christian 
world and its fringe of unbelievers proceed to celebrate 
the greatest feast of the time, the secret hope of the 
human race from the beginning having been a resurrec- 
tion from the dead. The joy of Christians is so deep 
and powerful that its heat warms the earth, and the 
infidel neighbor is warmed into enthusiasm and must 
join in our joy. The earth at this moment is propi- 
tious. The season of resurrection is come again, and 
the least believing can hope that, if the grass and the 
flowers can return after the winter's death, man shall 
have his permanent resurrection. The critics are 
helpless until popular enthusiasm has died away. It 
was St. Paul who said, " Your faith is spoken of in the 
whole world." — Rom. i. 

2. The Church achieved this wondrous power, not 
by trickery, or scheming, as so many pretend, but 
through the faith and hope of men. Not human 
trickery, nor angelic scheming, nor satanic cunning 
is capable of results so large as those secured by the 
teaching of the Apostles. These humble men of Gali- 
lee had seen their Master's first and latest miracles, 
had lived with Him, and suffered with Him, and had 
seen His dead body laid away in the grave after a 
savage death ; they had heard His prophecies of His 
resurrection from the tomb on the third day after His 
death, they had seen the empty sepulchre on the first 
Easter morning, and at intervals had conversed and 
eaten with their risen Lord forty days. By faith and 
by nature they had seen and heard all these wonder- 



256 THE chaplain's sermons. 

ful thiugs; and that hope which burned in their 
natural breasts as men, that death was only the door to 
life, became at once an integral part of their souls, so 
terrifically rooted that no power outside of God Him- 
self could tear it thence without annihilating them. 
The pagans of that day, in whose confused minds 
burned that same fire of hope, heard their story, their 
gospel, saw them go to death for it with perfect joy, 
and surrendered to the Christ. " God also bearing 
them witness by signs and wonders, and divers mira- 
cles, and distributions of the Holy Ghost according 
to His own will. " — Heb. ii. 

3. As they were witnesses to the fact and truth of 
the Eesurrection to the pagans of that day, so are we 
the witnesses in our own time. The poor infidel looks 
upon us as marvels ; men who believe that death is 
but a beginning, that many have returned from the 
grave, that men is immortal, that sin exists, and 
death is its wages. They study us to see what effect 
our beliefs have on our lives, to see if we really believe. 
The Apostles and the early Christians in great num- 
bers gave them ready proof by their sufferings and 
death. What proofs have we to give? Our scorn of 
life for its own sake, of sinful pleasure, of riches, of 
sin, and our devotion to Christ and His command- 
ments, to His people, and to all men. The power of 
the Church in each age is secured only through the 
faith of the people, sanctified and strengthened by 
the Spirit, and, as it were, reflecting Christ and His 
life for the unbelievers of the time. "You shall be 
witnesses unto Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, 
and Samaria," — Acts i, 



EASTER SUNDAY. 257 

n. — The World and the Eesurrection. 

1. Of all tlie doctrines to which we bear witness, 
none has such charm for the unbeliever as this of the 
Eesurrection. Men stand looking into the open 
grave, which open must remain until the last man has 
entered it, and grief-stricken cry out : Is this the last 
of us? With ^7hat astonishment and joy they see 
rising out of the tomb, triumphant over the inevitable 
law, the boy of Naim, restored to his widowed mother, 
the daughter of Jairus, amid the minstrels laughing 
with scorn, the long-dead Lazarus, honored by the 
tears of Jesus, and at last the Christ Himself, first- 
born of the tomb, who will never, unlike the others, 
taste death again. His answer to despairing man is 
comforting. The grave is only the gate to life eternal. 
As Longfellow sang : 

" There is no death, what seems so is transition. " 

But the Christ has more definite words : " I am the 
living bread which came down from heaven. If any 
man eat of this bread, he shall live forever : and the 
bread that I will give, is my flesh for the life of the 
world. " — John vi . " And this is the will of My Father 
that sent Me : that every one who seetli the Son, and 
believeth in Him, may have life everlasting, and I 
will raise him up in the last day." — John vi. 

2. In the hours of grief men beat against the walls 
of death crying out in their despair : Is there anything 
beyond the grave which holds hope for us ? Catholics 
are unable to measure the depths of this sorrow, be- 
cause they have never been without hope at any mo- 
ment. Unbelievers alone have looked into that abyss 

17 . 



258 THE chaplain's sermons. 

of hopelessness, and felt its full horror. For cen- 
turies in the lonely places of the world, places where 
tradition did not exist and Christ was unknown, the 
grief-stricken cursed the gods they knew, cursed death, 
cursed life and thought, because the end of all was 
misery, uncertainty, or nothingness. How glorious- 
ly the voices of the Apostles broke in upon this great 
despair. With what joy the eyes of sorrow gazed 
upon the risen Christ, and how all ears drank in His 
comforting message, and the strong words of His mes- 
sengers. " How beautiful on the mountains are the 
feet of them that preach the gospel of peace." They 
announced a life beyond the grave. "To him that 
shall overcome I will have to sit with Me in my 
throne: as I also have overcome, and can sit down 
with My Father in his throne. ' ' " Father, I will that 
where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may 
be with Me, that they may see my glory which Thou 
hast given Me, because Thou hast loved Me before 
the foundation of the world." — John xvii. 

3. Men wondered if in the life to come, as taught 
by the old traditions, their own personality^ would re- 
main intact. The pagans saw in the life beyond the 
grave only mournful shades or hideous monsters. 
Man had no longer any existence except in the sad 
memory of the shades, so that annihilation was pre- 
ferable to that dreary existence. The hope of meet- 
ing their beloved again did not hold out any special 
charm. Therefore, they questioned the oracles and 
the wise repeatedly, but without satisfaction. The 
body returned to its native dust, and there was no 
whisper of a resurrection ; until the Gospel came with 
its story of the visible Christ and His glorified body, 



EASTER SUNDAY. 259 

wlio conversed in human tones with His disciples, 
and ate fish and honey, to make them understand the 
reality of His Resurrection. The traditions of men 
were vague, the statements of the gospel were precise. 
"It (the body) is sown in corruption, it shall rise in 
incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it shall rise 
in glory. It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in 
power. It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a 
spiritual body." — 1 Cor. xv. 

III.— Man and the Resurrection. 

1. The message of the gospel was not a message of 
philosophy, or of speculation. It came direct from 
God to man, with the obligation to believe, and the 
bloody seal of martyrdom on its cover. The first mis- 
sionaries died for its truth. Is it any wonder that 
men went mad with joy over the divine consolations 
of the message, which annihilated death, and opened 
up to man the glory of the celestial world? They 
flung themselves on paganism, and pagan civilization 
went down before them like a house of cards ; they 
fled into the deserts, into the solitudes of convents, 
that they might enjoy their new treasures undis- 
turbed. They divided their riches, where they had 
them, among the poor, the^^ made themselves beggars 
in their scorn of this world, they turned their backs 
on honors, they put themselves at the service of the 
wretched, they found a hundred thousand strange 
channels by which to display the joy which moved 
them. For some centuries the wise world has been 
laughing at their extravagances, forgetting their 
victories ; for, whether crazy or not after the world's 



260 THE chaplain's sermons. 

standard, they achieved what their critics have not 
strength of mind even to dream of — the shifting of 
humanity's broad and violent stream from one chan- 
nel into another, from the channel of the false gods 
to the channel of Christ. They followed St. Paul 
to the letter. "I count all things to be but loss, 
for the excellent knov>dedge of Jesus Christ my 
Lord : for Whom I have suffered the loss of all 
things, and count them but as dung, that I may gain 
Christ."— Phil. iii. 

2. The same faith and hope which stirred them to 
tremendous achievement work in the Church and in 
us at this moment. "Woe to us if they did not ! And 
the same spectacle is witnessed in our ranks, of 
thousands withdrawing into solitude with Christ, of 
millions trampling upon the flesh and its concupis- 
cences, on the world and its bribes, in order to follow 
Christ and keep his commandments. If our faith and 
hope are alive, we cannot but hold in some scorn the 
penny prizes of life, for which so many fight, starve, 
and sin. If the final resurrection is something more 
than a name to us, it must fill our lives wdth such 
glory that the honors of time look cheap in its light. 
If we are really in dead earnest to achieve eternity, 
we can hardly have time to build up fortunes, to shine 
in society, to buy a great name, to get a heavy bank 
account, to enjoy all the pleasures of this life. You 
cannot persuade even the pagan of your earnest belief 
in the life to come, if he cannot see some difference 
between you and the mob of respectable earth-wor- 
shippers. 

3. The expression of faith should be the same in 
every age as to its strength, and vary only in the 



EASTER SUNDAY. 261 

method. In their zeal the early Christians went to 
martyrdom, a later generation fled into the desert, a 
third built convents and cathedrals and charities, a 
fourth set out on the crusades: all inspired by the 
glory of the resurrection of the body, the glory of the 
life to come. What expression shall our age give to 
the faith and hope in its bosom? Devotion to the 
Church, to the faith so bitterly attacked at this time. 
We are soldiers living in camp under military rule 
and hardship ; for almost four centuries we have been 
forced to do battle for the faith of Christ ; this is the 
eleventh generation in the iield. The twelfth will 
probably witness our triumph. What are the duties 
of good soldiers? Fidelity, courage, patience, so- 
briety, absolute devotion to the leader! "Hear, O 
Israel, you join battle this day against your enemies : 
let not your heart be dismayed, be not afraid, do not 
give back, fear ye them not."— Deut. xx. 



€^ ^BcettBton of t^e (^in^. 

And icJien He had said these things, whilst they looked on, he 
was raised up, and a cloud received him out of their sight.— 
Acts i. 9. 

OUTLINE. 

1. On this day Christ left the earth, having vindicated to Himself the 

kingship of men and angels. 

2. On this day He made His glory as manifest as had been the shame of 

Calvary. 

3. The timid and now exalted disciples wept that He should part from 

them. 

4. They were now to begin their work of preparing the world for His 

second coming. 

5. The world, in despair over death's mystery, joyfully accepted their 

promise of life eternal. 

6. The prospect of a glorious resurrection renewed the life of man. 

7. Yet many to-day find it hard to believe in everlasting life and continual 

happiness. 

8. The simple and beautiful conditions for obtaining that happiness. 

9. In this matter Christ and His vicar are compared with the teachers of 

materialism. 



I.— Mount Olivet. 

1. It is a difficulty with natures brought up in relig- 
ious routine to picture to themselves the wonderful 
scenes of Our Lord's life. So often have they heard 
from the pulpit formal descriptions of these scenes, so 
regular has been the reading of the gospel at the Sun- 
day Mass, that events, incidents, personages, group- 
ings of the most dramatic character, pass before their 
minds without arousing even curiosity. They are 
taken as a matter of course. Caesar crossing the 
Rubicon, entering Rome in triumph, dying at the base 
of Pompey's statue, thrills them as often as read or 
told; Washington bidding farewell to his army, re- 

362 



THE ASCENSION OF THE KING. 263 

fusing a crown, living in seclusion at Mount Yernon, 
brings tears to tlieir ejes; Christ in His Passion and 
Ascension is so mysterious and awful tliat tliey refuse 
to be astonished or moved. Yet to-day it is their 
King who leaves the earth in triumph. His special 
work is done. He has vindicated to Himself the king- 
ship of earth and heaven. Through all ages He will 
be accepted, even by the men who deny His divinity, 
as the Prince of the human race, the noblest, loftiest 
genius, the holiest, purest, humblest soul, that ever 
honored earth by his life and death. It will be ad- 
mitted that no human life ever influenced men like 
His. The greatest poets, sages, statesmen, leaders 
will look small and trivial beside Him. His genius 
or His Divinity, for pagan or Christian, has leavened 
the whole earth. Surely this one fact. His acknowl- 
edged superiority, ought to reach and stir the slowest 
nature. 

2. Mount Olivet is the antithesis of Calvary. Caesar 
went from the Lui)ercal to the Capitol, Napoleon from 
the throne to St. Helena, Moses from the highest 
position among his people to an obscure grave in the 
land of Moab. The Saviour passes from the shame 
and horror of Calvary to the glory of Mount Olivet. 
The scenes of the preceding six weeks are the empha- 
sis of this day ; the sorrowful road to the cross, the 
death-agony, the burial, and the days of mourning; 
the appearances in the garden, to the disciples on the 
way to Emmaus, to the group in the lonel}^ chamber, 
to St. Thomas, to the timid and frightened few on the 
seashore, who "durst not ask Him anything," to the 
Mother who never spoke to man of what she had seen. 
The appearances were made at various times and 



264 THE chaplain's sermons. 

places. But on Mount Olivet, in tlie beautiful spring 
morning, He stands before them all, as plainly mani- 
fested in His glory as He had been in His shame. 
They can doubt no more ; what each has seen more 
than ^Ye hundred can confirm. Calvary becomes 
glorious in the light of this glorified body about to 
ascend to heaven ; the cross becomes a throne ; and 
suffering is no longer a reproach, but an honor. 

3. One can hardly help a deep interest in the feel- 
ings of the disciples as they stood and knelt about 
the risen 'King. They knew not what to expect and 
were still prepared for new wonders. " They asked 
Him, saying : Lord, will you at this time restore the 
kingdom of Israel?" And He had to rebuke them 
gently, as He had so often done for their curiosity 
about things unconnected with the kingdom of heaven. 
Their one sorrow was that His departure was near. 
He comforted them in vain. How they must have 
begged for His visible residence with them. What 
tears and sobs arose from their ranks, as the Divine 
form began to rise from the forlorn world. Neither 
the love of His disciples nor the love of His mother 
could keep Him one moment from the doing of His 
Father's will. The old legends tell us that the earth 
kept the impress of His holy feet for long centuries ; 
and surely, if the inanimate rock betrays the existence 
of living creatures whose characteristics are unknown 
to man, it might well keep on its bosom the last foot- 
prints of the Divine Humanity. The disciples watched 
Him going into heaven, and stood looking long after 
the cloud had hidden Him, and had spent itself in 
the blue. They kissed the ground made holy by His 
presence, prayed for resignation, and looked again 



THE ASCENSION OF THE KING. 265 

and yet again toward heaven. No doubt tliey would 
have remained there indefinitely, but for the orders 
sent by the Master. 

II. — The Woeld Rejoices. 

1. " And while they were yet looking upon Him go- 
ing into heaven, behold two men stood beside them in 
white garments, who also said: Ye men of Galilee, 
why stand ye looking up to Heaven. This Jesus, 
who has been taken up from you, will come again, as 
you have seen Him going into heaven." So the grief- 
stricken crowd returned to Jerusalem, and thence 
sought the busy world with the tidings of all that they 
had heard and seen. For what the angels meant, 
and what the disciples understood, was without doubt 
that no delay should hinder the speedy announcement 
of that second coming of Christ to all men. The dis- 
ciples were to be the messengers of preparation and 
penance, the preachers of the new life. With what 
speed they hurried into the world, with what deadly 
earnestness they told to men the story of the Saviour. 
" The sound of them went forth over the whole earth, 
and their words into the very boundaries thereof." 
The first coming of Christ brought truth, the convic- 
tions of sin, the knowledge of the immortal life ; the 
second coming would bring judgment, the end of pro- 
bation, the final and irrevocable award for eternity. 
From their labor arose the great church of Christ with 
its sacraments, its undying organization, its incredible 
reaching out after the souls of men. In ten centuries 
the Apostles had carried the world with them. 

2. Humanly speaking, what was the secret of that 



266 THE chaplain's sermons. 

great success? How did the careless and pagan world 
bring itself to listen to the fishermen of Galilee? The 
dark mystery of death had been the cross of the pagan 
world, which saw no hope beyond the tomb, saw only 
the corruption and the horrid oblivion of the grave. 
The wisest of that world beat their hearts against the 
terrific wall of death in the vain attempt to understand 
the mystery. On one of the old tombs a mother had 
inscribed a curse against the gods, who had given her 
a beloved son only to rob her of him by eternal death, 
an incident which truly represents the temper of the 
ancient world in this regard. Men dabbled in magic 
in hope of getting some information from the spirit- 
land; but the gloom of mystery ever remained, their 
inferno was the home of despair, their elysium was 
the home of eternal sadness. When the Apostles ap- 
peared upon the scene with their story of the risen 
Christ, of Him who had conquered death and the 
grave, and who promised eternal life to his followers, 
such a light broke in upon the gloom of the pagan 
world as has never since been quenched. The mystery 
was solved by faith in Jesus the King. The road 
through this world, across the abyss of death, pass- 
ing the judgment throne, closing in heaven with a 
mere by-path into purgatory, lay as clear before the 
Christian eye as the Appian Way. No wonder the 
world seized on this splendid hope ; the only wonder 
is that it should have waited a thousand years to 
make the hope universal. 

3. This hope is the joy of the Christian world to- 
day, and marks the difference between ancient and 
modern times, between the moral and immoral of our 
day. The facts of the resurrection and the ascension 



THE ASCENSION OF THE KING. 2G7 

are the basis of our joy in this life as well as in the 
life to come. That we shall rise again makes death 
only a sleep, whose sweetness is enhanced by the joys 
of heaven ; it turns the hearts of the hardest of men 
toward the real life, and away from the pettinesses 
of earth ; the grave is no more a place of horror, since 
Christ and His saints have honored it, and the latter 
have endured in peace its corruption. The angels 
guard it, the church sanctifies it, the world respects 
it; and we can enter our graveyards, sad indeed at 
the end of so much beauty, but cheered with the hope 
of a life without end. How despairing would be our 
pleasant lives without this hope of resurrection, of re- 
union with our beloved, of life perfect to the least de- 
tail, we can see from the gloom which has depressed 
the hearts of the great who could not accept belief in 
Christ. 

III. — The Conditions of the New Life. 

1. Why do men find it so difficult to believe in the 
life to come and its eternal happiness? The material- 
ist thinks it too good to be true, and the faithless 
Christian knows its happiness is lost to him. There- 
fore the latter pursues an endless round of pleasure 
or of money-getting, and the other is forever building 
theories to account for himself, mere houses of cards, 
that tumble as he builds, and then leave him to name- 
less gloom at the last. He can believe in the eternity 
of matter, in the indestructibility of the universe, but 
he cannot suffer man to enjoy so glorious, and yet so 
ordinary a prize, since dead matter will share it with 
him, — man with his wonderful nature, unlike any 
other thing in nature, and yet like enough to secure 



268 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

for his individual personality that eternal existence 
not denied to the substance of the universe. Thus 
brilliant and clean men, who vi^ould have given up 
mere life here at any moment to enter on the life eter- 
nal, could they have believed in it, have gone to death 
in sorrow keener than the agony of dying, because for 
them the end of all things had come. On the other 
hand the unrepentant and still-believing sinners have 
gone to death mad with fear that they could not wholly 
die, and escape the judgment. 

2. Alas ! for these poor souls ! It would have been 
so easy for both to have entered into life, so simple 
and beautiful are the conditions of securing it. To 
love one another, to bear one another's burdens, to 
keep the commandments, to eat the flesh and to drink 
the blood of the Son of Man : these are the hard con- 
ditions from which men turn, when Christ invites 
them to the struggle for an everlasting crown. His 
own life is the pattern of the true Christian life, and 
what consolation its history offers the anxious minds 
of men. He lived thirty-three years in the sweet ob- 
scurity and holy peace of His mother's house, with- 
out other than the ordinary troubles of life ; His great 
suffering began and ended within twenty-four hours 
with the blessing of death; and at once He passed 
into the enjoyment of eternal glory. Is not this the 
history of the average man, who has led a life of man- 
ly decency and religious fervor? A peaceful con- 
science, a healthy body, a useful and lovable career, 
a brief agony, and then the glory of heaven for all 
eternity ; while the wretched violators of the laws run 
their uneasy career to a bitter death, a strict judg- 
ment, a sad extinction in eternal pain. 



THE ASCENSION OF THE KING. 269 

3. Thus Christ is to-day, as at the beginning, the 
leader of the cheerful multitude, who will not accept 
the horizon as the limit of man's career; He is the 
King of the heavenly life, and by the glory that life 
sheds on the earthly probation He is the King of the 
human race. The glory of the first ascension morn- 
ing shines as brightly on us as on the disciples ; and 
as He stood that day on Mount Olivet, preacher of 
the joy of life, precursor of the resurrected race, de- 
stroyer of death and sin, representative of all that is 
hopeful in the world, so to-day His Yicar stands 
before men, preaching the glorious destiny of the race, 
and holding to the Avorld's view the promises of Christ. 
When we contrast with His noble utterances. His 
cheerful teachings, His great services to mankind, 
the utterances, deeds, and teachings of the materialist 
school, the wonder grows that any could tolerate the 
mere presence of such teachers as IngersoU. He tells 
men that they shall all one day turn into corruption 
under the flowers of spring; that life is a tragedy 
which must be earned out with the graceful lightness 
of a respectable farce ; that men must love one another 
with the utmost tenderness because death puts an end 
to them and their tenderest love ; that they must cul- 
tivate mind and body to perfection, because in a little 
time mind, body, and perfection will be crushed like 
a worm under foot ; that they must be morally clean, 
because their tombs should speak to the next genera- 
tion ; and the crowds who listen to this pitiful rant 
cheer his absurdities to the echo. It was Christ or 
despair at the first ascension day ; the issue has not 
changed after two thousand years. 



Z^t feast of (pent ecoaf . 

But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in 
My name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to 
your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you. — John xvi. 26. 

OUTLINE. 

1. On this day of Pentecost, the first Pope ascended his everlasting throne, 

and the great Church of Christ began its career. 

2. Our indifference and ignorance in regard to that glorious beginning 

and still more glorious career. 

3. The vitality and power of the Christian principle in this day show no 

diminution after twenty centuries of use. 

4. The Power that wrought this wonder is the Holy Ghost, Whom in our 

daily lives we so often ignore. 

5. Men admire, love, and seek for earthly power, as can be seen in numer- 

ous instances. 

6. Yet earthly power is nothing when compared to thepower of the Holy 

Spirit working in the weakest man. 

7. For illustration, study the effect of Baptism on the infant. Confirma- 

tion on the youth. Holy Orders on the young man. 

8. Judge, then, what must be the value of the seven gifts of the Holy 

Ghost in Confirmation to the average soul. 

9. Hail to that gracious Light which enlightens us 1 Hail to the great 

Church ! the most wonderful illustration of what the Holy Spirit does 
for men. 

I.— -The Spirit in the Church. 

1. Christians celebrate to-day the birthday of the 
Church of Christ. On this day Peter, the fisherman, 
became the first Pope, and took possession of that seat 
of power which never will be removed from among the 
nations until time is no more. Of all the powers that 
ruled the earth at the first Pentecost, not one survives ; 
the people continue, but the races, the dynasties, the 
governments die out, are merged in their successors. 
Only the dynasty and government of Peter still rule 
in the world, after twenty centuries of effort and dan- 

270 



THE FEAST OF PENTECOST. 271 

ger. The oldest dynasty and the oldest form of gov- 
ernment are nevertheless the youngest and freshest 
in the world of this moment. The kings of the earth 
are mostly of yesterday, the governments are of the 
morning; and both tremble in dread of the morrow. 
Yet the Papacy, bound and helpless as it appears at 
this moment, goes on its way without fear, because 
its foundations are the work of God; and does its 
work as regularly in the day of persecution as of tri- 
umph, because the Spirit informs it, against Whom 
no man can raise a real barrier. " The Spirit breathes 
where he listeth. " Oldest in years and in achieve- 
ments, youngest in vitality and activity, the Church 
stands pre-eminent among the institutions of time. 

2. It is regrettable that so many Catholics are not 
better informed on the glories of the Church as dis- 
played in her history. With all the printed matter 
poured out on us in these days, there is very little 
sound information distributed, or even asked for by 
the multitude of readers. Thus, you will find num- 
bers of well-bred persons to whom the history of 
Christianity and its Founder are not known except in 
the mistiest outline. It is only on days like this, 
that the sermon provides them with information as to 
the beginnings of the reign of grace. They are amazed 
to hear of the first Pentecost, of the preaching of Peter 
and its wonderful results, of the exciting incidents 
that disturbed Jerusalem from the Ascension to the 
destruction of the beautiful city ; to hear of the days 
of the persecutions, of the days of triumph that suc- 
ceeded, of the subduing of the wild nations to the sweet 
yoke of Christ, and of the creation of a great Christen- 
dom. They have heard from our enemies in these 



272 THE chaplain's sermons. 

latter days that the Church is a dead institution, and 
they are half inclined to believe it. Hence, their sur- 
prise when the preacher describes for them the found- 
ing, the work, the triumphs of such a society of priests 
as the Jesuits, of such a body of women as the Sisters 
of Mercy, of such an organization as the Conference 
of St. Vincent de Paul, and then describes the im- 
mense charities accomplished by these societies in 
the very face of the assertion that the old Church is 
dead. 

3. It is a real disgrace not to be acquainted inti- 
mately with these things, which are the splendid 
evidences of the workings of that Holy Spirit, Who 
works also in each one of us. Two books should be 
on every shelf, in the home, in the student's room, in 
the workboy's bedchamber: the New Testament and 
the history of the Church. " Search the Scriptures," 
said Our Lord to the Jews, "... and the same are 
they that give testimony of me." — John v. And St. 
Paul wrote to his beloved disciple, "All scripture, 
inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to 
correct, to instruct in justice, that the man of God 
may be perfect, furnished to every good work." — 2 
Tim. iii. In the New Testament we hear direct the 
words of Christ, as they fell from His sacred lips, 
and are touched, as were the people who first heard 
them, by their deep meaning; in the history of the 
Church we see the great principles laid down by Our 
Lord worked out among the societies of the world, 
leavening all departments of human activity; and 
particularly do we see repeated in each age by the 
Holy Spirit the wonders of His first works in the little 
community at Jerusalem. An intelligent and reading 



THE FEAST OF PENTECOST. 273 

Catholic should be ashamed to be ignorant of these 
trv^o books, ashamed to think that his whole informa- 
tion on these matters comes from the occasional ser- 
mon. 

n. — Man's Lo\t: of Potv^e. 

1. The Christian, baptized and confirmed, is en- 
titled to the possession of the Holy Ghost. In these 
two sacraments the Spirit has stamped the soul with 
an indelible mark, and has guaranteed His assistance 
to His subject at every moment of life. It is a won- 
derful thing to know that the meanest human being 
can command power so immense in his own behalf. 
The same Being who wrought the wonders of the past, 
and works to-day in the wonders of charity performed 
by the Church, in the wonders of sanctity achieved by 
indi\dduals, is in the hands of a poor beggar, a hum- 
ble workman, a little child ; and these are able, there- 
fore, to wield a power for good in themselves and in 
others which no earthly monarch wins from his pos- 
sessions. Man loves power and is forever seeking it. 
How strange, then, that he pays little attention to the 
Holy Ghost, even when faith has made him acquainted 
in some measure with the great power conferred upon 
men by the Holy Spirit, when they receive Him into 
their souls with knowledge and joy. We love power, 
yet ignore the greatest power which man is allowed 
to use. 

2. How^ deeply the love of power is rooted in us can 
be seen from common examples. '\\Tio does not 
admire the chief officer of the gallant ship that so 
often faces the dangers of the ocean? TMiat appre- 

18 



274 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

elation is not lavished on the skilful and brave engineer 
who for many decades safely guides across the con- 
tinent trains bearing men and merchandise! The 
man of moneyed enterprises, whose talent and watch- 
fulness keeps going immense industries, whose word 
represents millions of dollars, whose advice is potent 
in the chambers of commerce and in the councils of 
the state, commands the respect and admiration of his 
fellows very often beyond all others, because all men 
understand the power of money much better than 
other forms of power. The divinity that doth hedge 
a king meets almost with worship from mankind ; the 
poet and the philosopher of eminence command both 
admiration and love; the true statesman enjoys not 
only the admiration of the people, he also finds his 
warmest support in king, financier, poet, and philoso- 
pher ; and finally the warrior, who has fought success- 
fully his country's battles, whose courage, genius, 
fii'mness, coolness have been displayed on the most 
trying occasions, finds actual worship among his ad- 
mirers. In ancient times the nations, full of admira- 
tion for that power which in the glad spring robed 
the earth in magic green, and later brought forth the 
bud, the fiower, and the seed, adored the sun, as the 
sum of all beneficent power. 

3. Yet all these forms of moral and physical and 
intellectual power are as but the clay to the statue, 
the spark to the sun, the name to the thing, when 
compared with the power of the Holy Ghost fully ex- 
pressed in a single devoted Christian. All these 
forms of power, king, warrior, statesman, poet, philos- 
opher, financier, once fought the Christian confessor 
in the struggle of truth during the time of the great 



THE FEAST OF PENTECOST. 275 

Eoman empire, and were overthrown by the Spirit 
that spoke within him. These tremendous forces put 
foi-th all their strength to move the will now of a 
child, then of a workman, again of a woman ; persua- 
sion, bribery, torch, sword, wild beast, and a hundred 
other weapons were used ; yet the child, the workman, 
the feeble woman conquered them all in single combat, 
through this awful power of the Holy Spirit. " Wis- 
dom hath strengthened the wise more than ten princes 
of the city." — Eccl. vii. 

III.— The Seten Gifts. 

1. In Confirmation we receive the power of the 
Holy Ghost in the seven gifts attached to that 
wonderful sacrament. Unfortunately only the few 
remember that they have these gifts in their posses- 
sion, the many make no use of them except by acci- 
dent or instinct, and pass to their grave without 
understanding their treasures. Yet take the instance 
of power conferred upon an infant by the reception of 
the Holy Ghost in Baptism, if you wish to see what 
is lost by this ignorance and indifference. In the 
baby hands is placed, first the key to the treasury of 
Christ's graces, and next the key to heaven itself. 
Around and in that innocent soul works the spirit of 
Jesus, its atmosphere is luminous of heaven, and 
should death release it from the prison of the body, 
the gates of heaven open to its demand. All the wis- 
dom and power of earth in one could not compass 
these two things, the opening of Christ's treasury, 
and the opening of heaven to a single soul ; yet the 
hands of a child, strengthened by the power of the 



276 THE chaplain's sermons. 

Holy Spirit, accomplish tho wonder with infinite ease. 
Take the example of the young priest just ordained. 
What was he a moment ago? A youth of the people, 
inexperienced, innocent, not beyond the average of 
his kind, worthy only of ordinary notice, incapable 
of more than ordinary achievement ; and now, through 
the Holy Spirit, he is that wonderful being, a priest, 
empowered to release men from their sins, to lift them 
up to standards of virtue, to bring upon the altar the 
Son of God in His actual flesh and blood, to distribute 
Him to all men, to lead the people in the way of truth, 
to announce the gospel everywhere ; he is the recipient 
of many honors, he is given a thousand opportunities 
to win honors ; and men stand in awe and reverence 
as they see him making the round of his duties, at the 
bedsides of the sick and wretched, ministering to the 
lepers in body and soul, courageous, laborious, pa- 
tient, fighting wrong in courts, forums, and in hovels, 
and preferred everywhere by the miserable of this 
world to the kings that sit on thrones. - 

2. What is so beautifully done for the infant and 
for the priest is done in the same way through Con- 
firmation for the commonest man. If he remains all 
his days without sign of power v/ithin him, he alone 
is to blame. When one asks the indifferent at this 
moment, where are these gifts in you, what use have 
you made of them, the response is merely an indif- 
ferent smile. Alas! how differently will these two 
questions sound at judgment, when the Christ will 
ask of the neglectful : Where are the gifts I secured 
for you ; what use have you made of those precious 
talents, which were meant to distinguish you from 
your less fortunate fellows, to make you a power in 



THE FEAST OF PENTECOST. 277 

the world for good, no matter how mean your occupa- 
tion, and to bring blessings on all who knew you for 
your own sake as well as for mine? What answer 
will you make? Perhaps, like the foolish servant in 
the parable, to say that you feared your master, and 
buried His talents? Hardly; for that unfortunate 
knew the talent was in his posession, while you forgot, 
the day after Confirmation, that Christ had given j^ou 
hie treasures. 

3. Hasten this day, therefore, to unbury your for- 
gotten treasures, and to put them out at interest, so 
as to have a splendid store against the day of reckon- 
ing. Do not leave your commonplace lives utterly 
without the light and heat and comfort of the Holy 
Spirit. Having Him not, life becomes a mean burden 
for all but the beasts of humanity ; with Him, the dark 
places are as noonday, and the bright places have the 
splendor of heaven. What glorious things has not 
this Comforter accomplished for the human race in all 
ages, but particularly since Christ sent Ilim to com- 
plete the work of the Eedemption ! How He has illu- 
mined and beautified the pathway of man from the 
first Pentecost ! Hail to that splendid Church, which 
He has made the mother of the nations ! Men come 
and go each in his little day, and the works of the 
wisest hands perish with them ; but the great Church, 
inspired by the Spirit, goes on forever, completes the 
work our feeble hands could not finish, perfects it, 
guards it, and gives it a kind of immortality among 
men. "The just shall shine, and shall run to and 
fro like sparks among reeds. They shall judge na- 
tions, and rule over people, and their Lord shall 
reign forever." — Wis. iii. 



t^t QBfeBBeb ttiniii^. 



Going, therefore, teach ye all nations : baptizing them in the name 

of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. — Matt. 

xxviii. 19. 
For there are three who gim testimony in heamn: the Father, 

the Woo'd, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one. — 

1 John V. 7. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The universe is ruled by one God in three divine Persons. 

2. The fact that we have a common Father should strengthen kinship 

among men. 

3. The Father's love for His children and His rights over them. 

4. His love best expressed in the sending of His son to us. 

5. As God's children the earth is ours, and as brethren of Christ we claim 

heaven. 

6. The Son's love for His earthly inheritance. 

7. The love of the Holy Ghost completes in us the work of the Son. 

8. The great power of the Spirit, which so many acknowledge not, 

9. The honor of intimacy with the Blessed Trinity. 



I.— The Fathee. 

1. Caeeful observers of Catholic life have noticed 
the frequent invocation of the Blessed Trinity in our 
public and private devotions. We begin and end our 
prayers, our daily actions, our special enterprises, in 
the name of the three Divine Persons ; in moments of 
danger and of trial we are seen crossing ourselves 
with the sign of redemption while invoking the Holy 
Three ; and so rooted in us is this custom that the 
very boys of the street, whose religious training may 
have been slight, will not take the plunge into their 
favorite stream until the whole world has seen and 

278 



THE BLESSED TRINITY. 279 

heard tlieir call upon the Blessed Trinity. This is 
our steady acknowledgment of God's sovereignty over 
the universe, and it is one of the noblest features of 
the Catholic life. The whole creation moves to the 
will of these Three in One, and the very stars sing 
their praises ; the Divine Man received His commis- 
sion as King of the human race from them ; He gave 
the Apostles and their successors the duty, right, and 
power to teach all men and to baptize them in the 
Name of the Blessed Trinity ; and the Christian 
Church is ruled, sustained, and continued by the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It is not 
strange, then, that the children of the household 
should attempt to acknowledge in each flying second 
the constant Providence of God. 

2. What a happiness is ours in having revealed to 
us a truth, which the old world knew only by infer- 
ence from the inspired teachings. We know that the 
first Person of the Blessed Trinity is Our Father, the 
parent of the entire race, without distinction of any 
kind ; and that we are all children of the one house- 
hold, watched and attended by a loving parent, and 
with a common destiny in the future. If we had that 
truth brought home to us as pointedly as are many of 
the common truths of our nature, what a very different 
world would be ours. To have a rich, powerful, wise, 
and loving father is the greatest blessing a child can 
secure ; to know that every moment of our career is 
absolutely in his care, that he is more solicitous than 
we of our whole welfare, that he hungers for our love, 
is proud of our success, and shamed by our failure, is 
comfort and joy for a lifetime. Few children of the 
earth are blessed with such a parent in the natural 



280 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

order; and 3^et it is tlie simple fact that the only 
Being Who can justly claim absolute rights over us 
as the everlasting Parent, is just this sort of a Father. 
All our days of time and eternity are in His hands, 
and the wants of each instant it is His delight to 
supply. "For your Father knoweth that ye have 
need of all these things." "For the Father Himself 
loveth you, because you have loved Me, and have be- 
lieved that I came out from God." — John xvi. 

3. Men acknowledge the office of the Father, and 
admit His rights over us, but rarely do they act upon 
their admissions. They slaughter one another in war, 
they cultivate race hatreds, they despise their brethren 
of a darker skin, they are eager for slavery, envious, 
ready to cheat others of money and rights, and stop 
at few crimes against their brethren. They reject the 
high destiny provided for them by their Father, in 
order to revel in the miserable pleasures of sin. Onl}^ 
in the ranks of the truly religious does the Father 
receive any real acknowledgment of His rights and 
gratitude for His favors. "Because you are sons, 
God hath sent the spirit of His Son to your hearts, 
crying: Abba, Father." — Gal. iv. We must makeup 
to Him for the shameful indifference of His other 
children. Therefore the Church prays on this day 
that " the confession of the Holy and Eternal Trinity, 
and Its undivided Unity may profit us to the salvation 
of body and soul. " 

n.— The Son. 

1. It is the nature of a good father to exhaust 
himself in showing his love for his children. If this 



THE BLESSED TRINITY. 281 

be true of the human father, how much truer is it of 
the Father of all men. It was enough for Him to 
have given us an everlasting kingdom, but He added 
to the gift and exhausted His power at the same 
moment, by giving us His Eternal Son. We shall 
never know until judgment the immensity of this Gift. 

Two blessings which are included in It we can all 
understand. The passing of Jesus Christ through 
this world taught us once for all how to live, and 
settled all problems of time and eternity for us, as 
far as these might trouble and terrify the soul. From 
the beginning men complained of the miseries of 
living, brought upon them by sin and its conse- 
quences. They had a right and a reason to complain; 
but Christ put an end to the right and the reason by 
His life and His teachings. The life modelled on His 
justifies and explains itself, and is the wonder and the 
delight of mankind. The mysteries that puzzled men 
as to their coming hither, their departure hence, their 
condition in the next world are mysteries no longer. 
Jesus has made all things plain. " His disciples say 
to Him: Behold now Thou speakest plainly, and 
speakest no proverb." — John xvi. 

2. The Father loved us enough to have His Son 
assume our nature, and the Son loved us so tenderly 
as to accept the human race as His inheritance. 
" And thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of 
the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of thy 
God." — Isa. Ixii. What man does not love the gra- 
cious inheritance left him by his father? What joy 
does he not take out of it, and with what care he 
preserves and increases its beauty ! This is our won- 
derful dignity, to be the inheritance of Christ ; to give 



282 THE chaplain's sermons. 

Him deep joy as He gazes from heaven on its loveli- 
ness; to have lavished on us His forethought, His 
care, His riches. The history of the world testifies 
to the beauty He has wrought in His Church, to the 
endurance of its wonderful foundations, proof against 
all tempests, to the rich decoration of its walls, to the 
bravery, holiness, simplicity of its people. He shares 
the world with us, as the children of His Father, and 
we share heaven with Him because we are His breth- 
ren. " And he that loveth Me shall be loved of My 
Father ; and I will love him, and will manifest Myself 
to him." — John xiv. 

3. That the Father has made us His children and 
secured for us a happy eternity, that the Son has taken 
us for His inheritance and made our lives complete 
and beautiful, does not end our complaining or rouse 
our gratitude. As Christians we share in the honors 
secured for us by Christ, only on cei-tain conditions. 
Poverty, the closest friend of mankind, must be our 
delight, labor our steady companion, and sinlessness 
our ordinary condition. How many have rejected 
Christ and all share in His kingdom rather than give 
up the pursuit of wealth, the love of idleness, the in- 
dulgence of sin! And they complain bitterly that 
He who could have given us riches, idleness, and 
luxury, out of His great abundance, could condemn us 
to poverty, labor, and self-denial. Well, it is given to 
man to choose between the two sets of conditions. 
The poor are at least free, the laborious are healthy, 
and the sinless are at peace, with heaven before them, 
and little regret at parting with the world ; while the 
rich are slaves to their estates, the idle are a prey to dis- 
ease, and the sinful are ever in disorder, stilling their 



THE BLESSED TRINITY. 283 

own consciences and brnsliing away the thouglits of 
death. For one remains the safety of eternity, for the 
other the terrors. " I am the vine, yon the branches ; 
he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth 
mnch fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If 
any one abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a 
branch and shall wither, and they shall gather him 
up, and cast him into the fire, and he burneth." 
— John XV. 

III. — The Holy Ghost. 

1. The Father in His love sent us the Son, and in 
turn the Son sends us the Holy Ghost, as if to com- 
plete His work. But you cannot separate the Three 
Divine Persons from one another, as they are the One 
God. "No man cometh to the Father, but by Me," 
said Our Lord. " And I will ask the Father, and He 
shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide 
with you forever. The Spirit of truth whom the 
world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, nor 
knoweth him; but you shall know him, because he 
shall abide with you, and shall be in you." — John xiv. 
The Father sent us upon this earth with a perfect 
nature, which we wounded by sin ; the Son healed us, 
organized us, opened heaven to us, and the Holy 
Ghost fits us for all our offices, and develops in us 
every virtue and power needed in our pilgrimage. 
Just as into a rich valley of the wilderuess comes the 
young heir, and with sturdy arm clears the land of 
timber, ploughs up the fruitful soil, and plants the 
vigorous seed; and then the sun, the rain, and the 
balmy airs of summer coming, the valley bursts into 
glorious bloom and ripening harvest. This is a figure 



284 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

of the work of the Holy Ghost, Whose rich heat and 
infinite power have given to the Church's soil the 
verdure and the harvests of twenty centuries. 

2. Yet we hardly acknowledge Him, even where 
some love of the Father and the Son w^orks in us. 
" Know you not that you are the temple of God, and 
that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" — 1 Cor. iii. 
Most of us are forced to admit our ignorance. Yet 
all that we admire in the history of the Church, in 
the lives of the saints of God, is His work. The 
miraculous beauty of the Blessed Virgin's soul, the 
glories of John the Baptist, the courage, steadfastness, 
success, fidelity of the Apostles, the heroic endurance 
of the martyrs, the genius of St. Augustine, St. 
Thomas, St. Francis de Sales, the works of St. Francis 
Xavier, the sweet holiness of Aloysius, Eose of Lima, 
Kateri Tegakwita, all these are His; the spiritual 
glories that have honored our own lives in the inno- 
cence and sanctity of the humble souls of our own 
neighborhood, and in our own hard-won virtues, have 
only one source, which is in Him. And all the glory 
that is to come until the end of the world, like the 
rays of light from the sun, must be referred to this 
wonderful sun of the Trinity. " It shall come to pass 
after this that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh ; 
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 
your old men shall dream dreams, and your young 
men shall see visions. Moreover, upon my servants 
and handmaids in those days I will pour forth My 
Spirit." — Joel ii. 

3. After all these statements it is easy to under- 
stand the dignity which attaches to our poor human 
nature. The children of God the Father, the inherit- 



THE BLESSED TRINITY. 285 

ance of God the Son, the temples of the Holy Ghost, 
we enjoy an intimacy with the Blessed Trinity which 
makes any violence done to us, either by oppressors or 
by our own sins, nearly sacrilegious. " But if any man 
violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. 
For the temf)le of God is holy : which you are." — 
1 Cor. iii. Did we fully understand and appreciate 
this holy and precious intimacy, we could hardly 
show such indifference ; but so poorly do we appre- 
ciate it, that w*e know little hesitation in disgracing 
the temple of God with lust, drunkenness, and many 
other abominations. With what patience the Blessed 
Trinity endures us ! God will not force us to under- 
stand and love Him. Of our own knowledge and will 
we must turn to Him, and permit Him to work in us 
through the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. "I will 
give them one heart, and will put a new spirit in their 
bowels : and I will take away the stony heart out of 
their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh : that 
they may walk in my commandments, and keep my 
judgments, and do them : and that they may be my 
people, and I may be their God." — Ezec. xi. 



Corpus C^xieti 



He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my 'blood hath everlasting life: 
and 1 will raise him up in tlie last day. For my flesh is meoA 
indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. — John vi. 56, 56. 



OUTLINE. 

1. This beautiful feast sadly reminds us that a great part of the former 

Christian world rejected the Christ of the Eucharist. 

2. And for three centuries their children have starved for want of this 

Blessed Body. 

3. The consequences can be seen by a comparison of the vigorous life of 

the Church to-day with fhe disintegration of the sects. 

4. The gracious influence of the Blessed Eucharist on the soul of man. 

5. The honor and consideration It secures for the human body. 

6. To appreciate this thoroughly compare the treatment by the world in 

any age of the bodies of men 

7. Who, then, can understand the Christian men, falsely called reformers 

that rejected the Christ of the Blessed Sacrament after an adoration 
of fifteen centuries? 

8. Their motives similar to those of the Jews who rejected and slew the 

Christ of Judea. 

9. We may class with both Jews and heretics the faithless and indifferent 

Catholics who never approach Christ in the Eucharist. 



I. — The Euchaeist and the Chukch. 

1. The celebration of the feast of the Body of 
Christ reminds us that many millions of people, who 
profess faith in Christ, deny His Presence in the 
Eucharist. Catholics declare that Jesus is here upon 
our altars, His Body and Blood hidden under the 
veils of the bread and the wine ; this truth most Prot- 
estants deny. What frightful consequences result 
from this denial ! If the Protestant world is right in 
its rejection of the Eucharist, how utterlj^ shameful 
has been the history of fifteen centuries of Chris- 



CORPUS CHRISTI. 287 

tianity, liow stupid is the present faith of those who 
worship the bread and wine as the Son of God ; and 
if we have the true doctrine, what shall be said of the 
criminal foll^^ of those who rejected the Christ of the 
Eucharist, and deprived their descendants of this 
precious food for over three centuries? If we are 
right, then these unfortunates outside the Church are 
like the faithless disciples described in the Scriptures. 
When Christ had plainly told them of his intention 
to feed them upon His Body and His Blood, they 
said one to another. This sajdng is hard, and who can 
hear it? "After this many of His disciples went 
back, and walked no more with Him." From the 
hour of the so-called Keformation the backsliders, in- 
nocent and guilty alike, have been walking farther 
and farther away from the Christ. 

2. Their own history is a proof of their separation 
from Christ. "Then Jesus said to them: Amen, 
amen I say unto you : Except you eat the flesh of the 
son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have 
life in you." For many centuries the whole Christian 
world believed in the presence of the Body and Blood 
of Christ upon the altar, and felt that the strength of 
Christendom had its source in this Sacrament. In 
two decades of disorderly commotion the knot of re- 
formers had overthrown for millions the doctrine of 
ages. Not by conviction did they overthrow it, but 
by compulsion, by civic disorder and political in- 
trigue. In consequence while the Catholic millions 
have fed upon this divine food, their Protestant 
brethren have starved without it; and the signs of 
this starvation are very clear in the present condition 
of the sects. They are without unity, and have tried 



288 THE chaplain's sermons. 

to make disunion a virtue ; their churches are bare of 
symbol and dead as a public hall in significance; in 
England and America one-half their possible number 
is plunged in indifference, materialism, atheism; it 
is hard to tell what many of those professing their 
faith believe of the Christ ; it is uncertain if they have 
any longer a Christian standard of morality- ; and in 
a hundred ways they show the starvation of three 
hundred years of separation from the Christ of the 
Eucharist. They have been eating manna in the 
desert thinking it the Son of God, and they are dead. 
3. On the contrary, see the vigorous life of the 
Church of Christ. In what honor is the See of Peter 
at this moment ; what streams of light flow from it 
into the world; look at the unity, the fervor, the 
faith, the steady, logical beliefs, the certainty, the 
cohesion, to be found in the Catholic American body 
with all its shortcomings. Yet how often in each 
century since Luther has the downfall of the Catholic 
"superstition" been foretold. These present graces 
the Church owes to that Living Presence of which the 
world cannot deprive her. She owes to it also all 
that is admirable in her history and in her daily life : 
her wonderful missions and missionaries, her great 
movements for the benefit of mankind, her wonderful 
temples, her sublime ritual, her splendid literatures, 
her art, her music, her miracles. The world is never 
tired praising them. So that if the Protestants have 
been like the disciples who walked no more with 
Jesus, the faithful Church has been like St. Peter, 
and the twelve. "Then Jesus said to the twelve: 
Will you also go away? And Simon Peter answered 
him: Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the 



CORPUS CHRISTI. 289 

words of eternal life. And we have believed and have 
known that thou art the Christ, the Son of God." — 
John vi. 

II.— The Eucharist and Man. 

1. From its effect upon the Church, which is the 
congregation of all the faithful, we can follow and 
understand the effect of the Lord's Body and Blood 
upon the individual Catholic. In the beginning God 
the Creator made man like to Himself by the godlike 
qualities conferred on the soul; in the Incarnation 
He made His Divine Son like us in His body ; and in 
the Eucharist He gives us this Sacred Body as food 
to the soul, and thus in a manner makes Christ and 
His humblest disciple one. We become through the 
Eucharist the intimate friend of the Saviour, in actual 
touch with Him. We are made the personal friends 
of the King, and the whole world is compelled to 
acknowledge the intimacy and friendship, because we 
have grown like Him in purity of soul and moral con- 
trol of the body. Alone in the ranks of the Catholic 
Christians does the world see the chastity, discipline, 
order, peace which mark a people under the dominion 
of the Holy Spirit ; the marriage tie is there observed 
as Christ commanded, and divorce is unknown, which 
ravages the rest of mankind like a violent plague; 
and the human race is properly protected in the 
womb, in birth, in the home, in the school, and in 
society, nor exposed to the demoniac crimes of un- 
natural parents, atheistic physicians, and the other 
wolves of the human wilderness. The Catholic soul, 
fed upon the Body of Christ, has the eye to see, the 
light to follow, and the heart to do, the right. 
19 



290 THE CHAPLAIN'S SERMONS. 

2. The human body shares in these honors con- 
ferred by the Eucharist upon the soul. Living and 
dead the Church insists, has always insisted, and 
forced the world to follow her lead, that the body of 
man should everywhere be treated with respect. All 
Christian lands have written her commands on this 
point in their statute-books. We all know the respect 
accorded to the dead body, even that of the pagan, 
which has been the temple of the Holy Ghost. The 
body fed upon the Body of Christ is treated in its last 
conditions of sickness and death with the tenderest 
respect. Its dying moments are watched with devo- 
tion and solaced by prayer; when life has fled, it is 
decently prepared for the grave, interred with holy 
rite in blessed ground, and its long rest is guarded 
for centuries. The friend of the King is not to be 
treated like a dog, or worse, hastily dumped, while 
life's heat lingers in the inert members, into the first 
trench, and then forgotten ere the earth has settled 
upon his corpse. Though it is to become the food of 
worms, and slowly turn to ashes, it is still more 
sacred than the holy places of Judea, for Christ the 
Lord spent many an hour in this ruined temple ; and 
in death it breathes the fragrance of His presence 
more powerfully than any soil pressed by His holy 
feet. 

3. How significant all this is we may see from the 
treatment which the world offers to the poor bodies 
of men, when there is no Christ of the Eucharist by 
to warn and condemn. Li ancient days one might 
have the most ornate burial rites that money could 
buy, if he or his friends had the money; lacking 
which, the dead man was thrown wherever conven- 



CORPUS CHRISTI. 291 

ience suggested. The Church shamed the pagans 
into more decent treatment of the dead poor. The 
pagans of our day have as little respect for the bodies 
of the dead as their ancestors. In public hospitals 
doctors and students feel no shame, no pity, in their 
use of the bodies which the law hands over to them 
for the dissecting-table, treating them as the meanest 
merchandise ; the burial of paupers is a burlesque in 
public institutions ; wherever the atheist or material- 
ist has control one would prefer in death to be a pet 
dog, so much more honor is shown to the body of a 
favorite animal. The same spirit is visible on every 
side in the use men make of human bodies while yet 
they live and labor. The huge industries of our time, 
as of old when kings built pyramids, seize and grind 
to powder the bodies of their work-people without a 
thought of regret, but rather with joy. The engines 
of atheistic progress destroy life ; the truth, like the 
Blessed Eucharist, gives life eternal. 

III. — The Ceime of the Heretics. 

1. It would take many sermons to follow the influ- 
ence of the Blessed Eucharist upon the lives of men, 
and upon the corporate life of the Church. What 
has been said shows how clearly the promises of Our 
Lord have been fulfilled under our own eyes ; that " if 
any man eat of it [the Blessed Eucharist] he may not 
die," that "he shall live forever," that "he hath ever- 
lasting life," that Jesus "will raise him up at the last 
day," that "he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my 
blood, abide th in me, and I in him." It seems very 
strange that the men, who in the sixteenth century 



292 THE chaplain's sermons. 

departed from the fold of the true Church, should 
have given up this beautiful gift of Christ of all 
othjBrs. Men might quarrel with public honors to 
Mary, with papal supremacy, with confession, with 
fasting, as their temperaments inclined, and in the 
end reject them; but to surrender the sacrament 
which gave them the Body and Blood of Christ would 
seem fairly impossible. One would think that every 
effort ought to have been made to preserve this jewel 
from the general wreck of doctrine, that excuses 
might have been found for retaining it, so that man- 
kind might still have left the treasure of the human 
Christ, no matter what the fate of the visible Church. 
On the contrary, Christ was flung out from among 
the people with indecent speed. The most beautiful, 
powerful, and ancient doctrine of Christianity received 
less consideration than the sacraments of Baptism and 
Confirmation. 

2. The explanation of this treatment is to be found 
in the summary trial and execution of the Saviour by 
the Jewish leaders. The parallel between the two in- 
stances is very close. The Scribes and Pharisees had 
seen the miracles, heard the words, felt the power of 
the Son of God, and were utterly conquered by His 
majesty ; but they hardened their hearts against Him, 
as they were determined to accept no Messiah that 
did not secure their privileges, and acknowledge their 
power. They were sinners against light. Unable to 
crush Him, or to win Him, unwilling to accept His 
doctrines of holiness, there was no alternative left but 
to murder Him. They could not control Him, and 
while He lived their power over the common people 
was gone. Therefore they put Him to death. In 



CORPUS CHRISTI. 293 

the same way the leaders of the so-called Eeformation 
rejected and slew in the hearts of the people the 
Christ of the Eucharist. They kept the form of the 
bread and the wine, but they banished Christ, kept 
the supper-table but banished the altar, kept the 
priest but banished the sacrifice, held the temple but 
dismissed the God of the temple. They could not 
bear to look upon Him whom they had slain, they 
could not endure the horror of approaching Him in 
the awful sacrifice ; and so, in spite of the common 
love for the Christ of the Eucharist, of the witness of 
history, of the evidences of its power on every side, 
the Eucharist was banished that the leaders might 
put their consciences to sleep forever. 

3. Even with this explanation who can understand 
the Jews, who can enter into the corrupted hearts of 
the Keformationists? They condemned their cause 
when they drove out the Christ, and extinguished the 
tabernacle light, which had burned so many cen- 
turies. Who can explain also the wretched Catholics 
who never approach the holy table, and whose neglect 
in earlier times forced upon the statute-book of the 
Church that law which sends every Catholic to com- 
munion once a year under penalties? Never did our 
enemies and persecutors inflict upon us so shameful 
a blow ! One would think that the Church would be 
forced to enact a law keeping us from crowding 
the altar-rail! Instead, there are souls so dull, so 
wrapped up in earthly affairs, that the Eucharist has 
no savor, no attraction for them; therefore, they 
must be well-nigh dragged to meet that Christ whom 
they may never know until the meeting at judgment. 



Z^c (^BBumption. 



A great sign appeared in heaven: A Woman clothed with the sun, 
and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve 
stars. — Apoc. xii. 1. 

OUTLINE. 

1. Catholics alone venerate the sanctified nature of the Mother of God. 

2. Her nature was perfect, without sin, and without tendency to sin. 

3. Study of her character will reveal new perfections until the end of time. 

4. It was fitting that the grave's corruption should not touch her body. 

5. The general belief in her Assumption, 

6. Its natural effect upon the Apostles and the first Christians. 

7. The Blessed Virgin owed her great honors to her unique likeness to 

Jesus, 

8. This likeness to Christ is our only guarantee of a holy resurrection. 

9. The sun of Christ's resurrection finds its moon in Mary's assumption. 



I. — The Sinless Yibgin-Mothek. 

1. Many who profess a firm belief in the divinity 
of Christ are unable to understand the honor, public 
and private, which Catholics pay to the Mother of 
God, or the great sanctity which she attained. In 
return Catholics cannot understand the complete in- 
difference of the Protestant world to the Mother of 
God. It has honored many inferior women of differ- 
ent nations with statues and other testimonials of es- 
teem, but for the Mother of Christ it seems to have 
little feeling above that of contempt. In society the, 
mother of the reigning king, or of the national hero, 
is not without special honor. Americans have in fact 
heard much more of Martha Washington and Mary, 
the wife and mother of our great leader, than of Mary 
of Nazareth. There must be degrees of distinction, 

294 



THE ASSUMPTION. 295 

and there must be degrees of holiness : and it may be 
taken for granted that in distinction and in holiness 
no woman that ever lived was worthy to touch the 
hem of the Virgin's garment. When a person or a 
society fails to observe just distinctions in important 
matters, confusion of life is the natural and inevitable 
result. Failing to give the Blessed Mother proper 
veneration, the Protestant world finds itself full of 
contradictions ; and in the spiritual life it presents a 
dead level of the commonplace, in which stands a 
mutilated figure of the Christ, like an obelisk on a 
desert plain. Catholics alone commemorate the dig- 
nities and honors which God Himself heaped upon 
the Queen of angels and saints. 

2. We believe that all men are born in original sin, 
while over her sin never had any dominion; that in 
consequence of sin men have a hard struggle to reach 
perfection, while the sinless Mother's nature ran like 
a river to the sea from the perfect to the more per- 
fect; that while the natural tendency is toward the 
gratifying of our own will, all her tendencies were for 
doing perfectly the will of God. As the Mother of 
the Lord, as the Virgin incapable of sin, as the great 
saint whose will added to the glory of her nature new 
glories of sanctity, she is entitled to the reverence of 
the followers of Christ, and indeed of the whole 
human race, whom her life and character so honored. 
There can be no insignificance about her in any way, 
for she is the Mother of the King ; and while that 
may not mean much to the philosophers of society, it 
means great things in this case. It is our belief that 
this perfect woman responded perfectly to each grace 
that God bestowed upon her, that Eve, fresh from the 



296 THE chaplain's sermons. 

hand of God, was not so beautiful, innocent, and lioly 
as she at her birth, and that in the moment of the 
Incarnation she was more than worthy of the royal 
salute of the Archangel Gabriel : " Hail, full of grace : 
the Lord is with thee! Blessed art thou among 
women." — Luke i. 

3. It is to be regretted that, if God intended her 
place in the world to be as obscure as some consider 
it, He should not have made His angels more circum- 
spect in their language. Her place in the gospels is 
that of a royal personage, in history it is that of a 
conqueror, in the Church's traditions it is that of a 
celestial queen. It is a vain pretence that her glory 
obscures or diminishes for many souls the glory of 
her Son. This is an impeachment of human reason. 
The glory of the stars does not eclipse the glory of 
the sun for any human being, and only idiots prefer 
the better to the best. We are not done honoring the 
achievements of good missionaries because Francis 
Xa\der converted millions, nor has Christ forbidden us 
to forget goodness in men because He alone is Good. 
In all the degrees of holiness this Woman stands first ; 
and her eminence is such that the second in the line 
does but kiss her feet. If the little flower which 
lights up the meadow will give the poet and the 
scientist occasion for study and rhapsody until time 
ends, we count it as certain that time cannot exhaust 
the beauties of the Virgin's soul. " Who is she that 
Cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, 
bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array." 
— Can. vi. 



THE ASSUMPTION. 297 



n. — The Abandoned Grave. 

1. Catholics have some knowledge of Mary's gifts, 
but the world has none, to whom she is only the 
simple mother of Nazareth. Her perfections, her 
gifts, her office have been well impressed on Catholic 
hearts by the Holy Spirit, and have made the as- 
sumption of her body into heaven before death had 
chilled it, as natural to us as to the first Christians. 
Her beautiful body had given Christ His Body, and 
as death did not disfigure Him, nor hold more than 
momentary dominion over Him, it was fitting that a 
similar honor should be granted to the holy body 
which conceived Him. Other women bear children 
who must lie down to corruption; this woman gave 
to earth its imperishable Man. Sin alone deserved 
death, and animality dissolution; in her there was 
neither sin nor concupiscence, and she was entitled 
through God's favor to Eve's forfeited privileges. So 
clear and sensible do all these reasonings appear to 
the Catholic mind that we wonder at the blindness 
which accepts Christ as the Son of God, and then 
shuts Him off from all human connection, as if He 
had come straight from heaven full-grown, and owed 
reverence and love to nothing human. To study the 
home of Nazareth is to look for the glories and privi- 
leges of Mary's life and career. "Mary hath chosen 
the best part, which shall not be taken away from 
her." — Luke x. 

2. It was thus the first Christians reasoned; and 
when they had seen death reluctantlj^ claim her, as 
he had claimed Her Son, when they had laid her away 



298 THE chaplain's sermons. 

in the tomb with tears and hymns, they waited in 
patience and in expectation for revelations of joy, 
akin to those of the Easter morning. The tradition 
of the Church tells us that on the third day they 
came to the tomb as usual to pray and sing hymns, 
and found there only a bed of flowers ; while from the 
heaven came the echoes of a song of joy and triumph 
as the angels and saints welcomed their Queen. 
There was no great surprise among these early be- 
lievers, and there is even less among us, who are 
without the strong faith of the first days, at the es- 
cape of Mary from the grave and its blight. It was 
in the power of the Lord of life and death so to honor 
His Mother, and all the indications of her life pointed 
to an early resurrection. He had conferred such 
honors, though not so speedily, on others, who were 
less than she. "A throne was set for the King's 
mother, and she sat on His right hand." — 3 Kings ii. 
3. We can understand what a tremendous effect the 
assumption of the Blessed Mother's body into heaven, 
before corruption had touched it, must have had upon 
the Apostles and upon the early Christians. They 
had seen the Son die, had placed His Body in the 
tomb, and had been the terrified and incredulous 
witnesses to His Resurrection. In the terror of the 
days succeeding the Passion, in the complete bewil- 
derment which fell upon them after His first appear- 
ance from the dead, it required the gentle reproaches 
and the loving encouragement of Jesus, to introduce 
order into their chaotic thoughts and tumultuous 
emotions. It was many days before they felt sure of 
themselves, and it required the powerful influence of 
the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to give them final and 



THE ASSUMPTION. 299 

indefectible faith in this marvel of the Eesurrection. 
But now for many years the indwelling of the Spirit 
had given cohesion to their thoughts, and had clari- 
fied and strengthened their human emotions. The 
habits of belief had been formed, and they brought 
to the tomb of Mary the trained minds of experienced 
apostles, not the dazed minds of simple fishermen. 
They had seen what God could do for Himself, and 
were now to see what He could do for the Virgin 
Mother of God. When they found the empty and 
flower-strewn grave, and heard the singing of the 
angelic choirs, nothing was added to their faith in 
Christ; but what boundless enthusiasm and gratitude 
must have filled their hearts that they had been made 
witnesses of another resurrection from the dead, and 
had received this second pledge from their Master of 
the great reward which awaited them in the days to 
come. The Blessed Mother had anticipated the glory 
of the last day. "I am alive and was dead, and be- 
hold I am living forever." — Apoc. i. 

III.— Our Eternal Hope. 

1. The resurrection of the body for which all Chris- 
tians hope is the reward of those who in this life have 
made themselves by the grace of God very like to 
Christ. To the lost souls of men the resurrection 
will be their direst punishment, to the saved it will 
be in itself a splendid happiness. The difference be- 
tween our restoration and the Assumption of the 
Virgin Mother is a precise expression of the vast dif- 
ference between our likeness to Christ and hers. She 
escapes what we must endure ; the corruption of the 



300 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

grave and the long centuries of separation for body 
and soul ; because she was one of the few whose like- 
ness to Christ is so exact and so exalted, that it would 
seem strange if her death and restoration did not in 
some fashion carry out the likeness. It is the 
opinion of many wise teachers that had man contin- 
ued in the sinless condition of the first parents at 
their creation, death and elevation to glory would 
have come to us very much as they came to Mary, 
without pain or shadow of change, and even without 
the formality of falling asleep. This second Eve had, 
like her Son, never known the dominion of sin, she 
had suffered the anguish of a thousand ordinary 
deaths beneath His cross, she carried on in her long 
life a perfect apostolate far superior to that which the 
Apostles themselves carried on, she had been made 
so like Jesus in innocence, virtue, labor, and power 
that the Church felt justified in believing her and 
calling her the Queen of angels, patriarchs, prophets, 
and apostles ; therefore, it needed but this last honor 
of a speedy resurrection to make the likeness betvv^een 
her and her Son complete and perfect. She owed 
her assumption not only to her position as His 
Mother, but also to her unique resemblance to Him. 
This entire paragraph has been put into a single sen- 
tence by the mighty eloquence of St. Paul : " If we 
have been planted together in the likeness of His 
death, we shall be also in the likeness of His Resur- 
rection." — Rom. vi. 

2. This likeness to Christ is the only guarantee we 
have that the resurrection will be for us honor and 
glory. It is well to take comfort from the belief in a 
final restoration of sanctified humanity, and to look 



THE ASSUMPTION. 301 

forward to a reunion of all who have loved us on this 
earth ; at the same time we must make sure that this 
belief is something more than a mere sentiment, a 
verbal consolation for passing melancholy. Innocent 
and holy as was the Blessed Mother, and lifted far 
above the greatest saints in the quality of her holi- 
ness, she achieved her shining honors only by a life 
of wondrous struggle, amid bitter and overwhelming 
sorrows. It is well to rejoice that Christ has shared 
with her His glory of immediate resurrection from 
the dead, and has made her assumption so glorious an 
influence in the Christian world ; but if she paid the 
full price for these honors by passing through the 
shadows of Calvary, it is quite certain that we shall 
not attain to the glory of a perfected human nature in 
heaven without a full measure of that labor and pain 
which accompany the work of salvation. We must 
become like to Christ in His sinlessness, if we are to 
be with Him in His Kingdom. We must get away 
from our sluggish routines and plunge earnestly into 
the activities of the spiritual life. St. Paul has also 
summed up this paragraph in a single sentence : " If 
thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and be- 
lieve in thy heart that God hath raised Him up from 
the dead, thou shalt be saved. " — Eom. x. 

3. The honor of the Assumption was not conferred 
upon our dear Mother for her own satisfaction alone. 
All her children were to have a share in it to the very 
end of time, as can be seen in the popular delight 
over the celebration of this day. One may reason at 
willover the probabilities of the Assumption and its 
fitness or unfitness, but the influence of the tradition 
in the Church is something ever to be admired. The 



302 THE CHAPLAIN'S SERMONS. 

doctors of the law have discussed conclusions and 
agreed and differed a thousand times, but the faithful 
remember only that the third day Christ rose again 
from the dead, and that His Mother was always like 
Him ; and so the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, 
has made of the tradition a practical fact, and cele- 
brates the Assumption long before it will be declared 
a doctrine of the faith. Therefore, the soft light of 
that empty tomb, around which once stood the ador- 
ing Apostles, illumines the Christian world, cheers 
all hearts, sheds a radiance on art, inspires many a 
poet, and fills the saints with ecstasy. The sun of 
the resurrection finds its soft-beaming moon in the 
assumption of Mary. The. joy of those who heard 
celestial hymns above the empty sepulchre on the 
first assumption morning is repeated in our joy, who 
hear the heavenly hymns of the universal church on 
this glorious day. Compared with our faith and 
hope, so strengthened by this beautiful miracle, how 
wretched are the shifting beliefs of those who have 
forgotten the very name of Christ's dear Mother, and 
can hardly persuade themselves that even the Christ 
rose from the dead. 



t^t ^ngefe» 



Thomands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times 
a hundred thousand stood before him. — Dan. mi. 10. 

It came to pass that the beggar died, and wa^ carried by the angels 
into Abraham's bosom. — Luke xvi. 22. 

OUTLINE. 

1. The angelic nature is of wonderful beauty. 

8. The office of the angels is to serve God and man. 

3. And sacred history has many examples of this service. 

4. The angels were once subject to the weaknesses of a finite nature. 

5. Some rebelled against God, through pride, or through contempt of us. 

6. Their punishment was eternal, as was the reward of the faithful angels. 

7. Who cannot but love us after their own sorrows. 

8. Another bond between us is that Jesus is their King, Mary their Queen. 

9. We should make good use of their powerful friendship. 



I. — Nature aot) Office of the Angels. 

1. Man is not the only intelligent creature in the 
service of God. Lord of the earth though he is, his 
power and his nature are very inferior to the spiritual 
creatures who serve God face to face, and whose duties 
are summed up in their beautiful name : angels, or 
messengers. In this month the Church of God so- 
journing on this earth pays them direct homage, both 
for their beautiful nature and its union with God, and 
for the great love and many services they have borne 
mankind. It is only the great Church which takes 
note of all things in connection with her children, 
and gives to all things their due importance. To the 
great saints and martyrs who served God and man 

303 



304 THE chaplain's sermons. 

with such distinction she accords the honors of the 
altar, that men may never forget their services or 
their example; and to the angels she pays similar 
honors for similar reasons. In God's creation, they 
are the most beautiful and most powerful. All God's 
creatures, from the meanest insect that crawls, do Him 
honor, and the beauty of the least displays the power 
and goodness of the Creator. What honor, then, does 
He not receive from these highest of all created excel- 
lences, pure spirits, unhampered by our conditions, 
strong, swift, free, and beautiful as light. "Thou 
wast the seal of resemblance, full of wisdom and per- 
fect in beauty." — Exod. xxviii. "Behold an angel 
of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God 
shone round about them." — Luke ii. 

2. Their office is to serve God forever, as minister- 
ing spirits, and to give us aid in our pilgrimage 
through life. At first sight it seems incredible that 
these splendid spirits should concern themselves with 
us. Yet Christ Himself tells us that " there shall be 
joy before the angels of God upon one sinner doing 
penance."— Luke xv. And St. John gives us a pre- 
cise picture of their work for us. " I saw seven angels 
standing in the presence of God; and there were 
given to them seven trumpets. And another angel 
came, and stood before the altar, having a golden 
censer; and there was given to him much incense, 
that he should offer of the prayers of all saints upon 
the golden altar, which is before the throne of God. 
And the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the 
saints ascended up before God from the hand of the 
angel." — Apoc. viii. It is clear that God would 
have all His creatures bound to one another in mu- 



THE ANGELS. 305 

tual love and service. The animal world serves man 
in various ways, and receives in return the service 
of care and tenderness. The angels watch over and 
guard us with their superior strength, we render ser- 
vice to one another in the hours of need, and God has 
the care of all in His mighty hands. Thus are we all, 
creatures of God, bound to one another in loving ser- 
vice, in true fellowship. " He hath given His angels 
charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways." — 
Ps. xc. 

3. There is nothing lowering in that service. The 
soul of man is immortal. Whatever service is ren- 
del-ed to him will have immortal gratitude, which is 
more than the service of the world can offer to any 
man. The angels feel honored in this duty of help- 
ing men, the beloved brethren of their great King, 
" bought with a great price" from the slavery of Satan. 
What an honor to us that these glorious spirits serve 
us, and fill our pathway with heaven's own light, 
though the world may have given us only its darkness. 
Hence, the experience of the saints and the Holy 
Scriptures are full of the special services rendered by 
the angels to men. The Ai'changel Michael took 
charge of the body of Moses for its secret burial in 
the land of Moab, and has charge of the souls enter- 
ing and leaving Purgatory : Gabriel is well known as 
the angel of the Incarnation ; Eaphael was the loving 
guide of young Tobias; an angel settled the doubts 
of St. Joseph, and directed him in his care of Jesus ; 
angels were present at the Agony in the garden, at the 
Eesurrection and the Ascension. They have been 
messengers of woe as well as of gladness ; to Egypt 
on that fatal night when the first-born died, and to 
20 



306 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

the camp of the Assyrians, which lost nearly two 
hundred thousand men. "O Lord my God, Who 
makest Thy angels spirits, and Thy ministers a burn- 
ing fire." — Ps. ciii. 

II. — HiSTOEY OF THE AnGELS. 

1. If we wonder at the deep sympathy with which 
the angels regard us, it is because we are unacquainted 
with their history, and its tragic ending before they 
were confirmed in the grace of God. Their nature at 
its best is only the nature of creatures, limited, weak, 
and helpless of itself. It was once within their power 
to sin. Close as they stood to God, they had before 
them the risk of falling away from Him, and could 
only retain their union with Him by effort of the will. 
They were open to sins of pride and vanity in their 
own power and beauty, and they could indulge in envy 
and hate of others. That same probation over which 
we grieve, and have reason to grieve, was their lot, as 
it seems to be the lot of all the intelligences in God's 
service. He will have only free and loving service 
from us. The angels with all their natural glory were 
no better off than ourselves. Perhaps their lot was 
worse, for they had no sin of Adam to taint their 
nature and make goodness appear undesirable, no 
excuse for any wandering of the heart from God. 
When they sinned it was with eyes wide open to their 
own deep ingratitude. 

2. Their sin was rebellion against the power of 
their Creator. They would no longer serve Him, 
preferring to follow one of His creatures. It is 
strange to learn that, according to some Fathers of 



THE ANGELS. 307 

the Church, mankind was the indirect cause of this 
rebellion. It is thought that the Eternal Father 
made known to His angels the future race of inferior 
beings which He was to create, their miserable fall 
from grace, and the sending of His Divine Son to lift 
them up again by assuming their nature; and He 
asked the angels to adore this God-Man as their 
King. This was the occasion which brought out the 
terrible display of Satan's pride. He was the noblest 
angel in heaven. " Thou wast in the pleasures of the 
Paradise of God ; every precious stone was thy cover- 
ing." — Ezec. xxviii. He found himself too glorious 
to accept another king, or to submit to the wisdom of 
God, and he raised the standard of rebellion against 
Him to whom he owed all his beauty and power. 
The Scriptures tell the story. "There was a great 
battle in heaven: Michael and his angels fought 
with the dragon; and the dragon fought, and his 
angels; and they prevailed not, neither was their 
place found any more in heaven. And that great 
dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called 
the de\T.l and Satan, who seduceth the whole world : 
and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were 
thrown down with him." — Apoc. xii. 

3. Thus they were defeated, and thus was sin 
punished swiftly and terribly, as it ever is where in- 
telligence and power unite to flout the living God. 
The seraph of heaven became the leader of hell. " I 
saw Satan like lightning falling from heaven. " —Luke 
X. And how is he described in the same Book which 
gives him so much glory ? " He was a murderer from 
the beginning, and he stood not in the truth, because 
truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he 



308 THE chaplain's sermons. 

speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the father 
thereof." — John viii. Thus the King, Whom he re- 
jected, describes him. With him into eternal woe 
went the angels whom he had seduced, while the faith- 
ful angels under Michael's leadership received the 
happy gift of everlasting fidelity to God, being made 
unable to sin any more. The rebellion which con- 
vulsed heaven tested their metal, and found it ring 
true. Here are our own history and our own proba- 
tion anticipated. In the next world we are to be the 
associates of Michael or of Lucifer. 

III. — The Angels Love Us. 

1. AVith such a history it is impossible that the 
angels could help having a deep sympathy for us, 
now passing through a crisis like that which once 
troubled heaven ; impossible that they should fail to 
help us, with the memory of their own great tragedy 
engraven upon their nature. It was not necessary 
even that God should have formally offered them the 
office and duty of aiding us in life, death, and judg- 
ment. "A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind." 
Having the loving nature which seeks out the miseries 
and needs of others, and having the power to relieve 
and solace, it is quite probable that they asked in 
pure love for the honor and joy of serving us. More- 
over, two beings of our own human nature had be- 
come the object of their adoration and love. Jesus 
was their King in all the glory of His perfect human- 
ity, and Mary has been made by His power their 
glorious Queen. For love of these two, Son and 
Mother, the angels cannot but love their brethren, 



THE ANGELS. 309 

and cannot but exert all their immense power that we 
may be an honor in this world and in the next. 

2. How are we not honored in the service of these 
beautiful beings ! With the King of the Angels upon 
our altars, we have in addition the service of the 
angelic host for our daily comfort and consolation. 
" You are come to the company of many thousands of 
angels." — Heb. xii. The beautiful world is full of 
their heavenly radiance, for they have special guard- 
ianship over men, over temples, and schools, and 
cities and towns, over vessels in the depths of the sea, 
and in particular over the innocent children. " See 
that you despise not one of these little ones : for I 
sa}^ to you, that their angels in heaven always see the 
face of My Father Who is in heaven." — Matt, xviii. 
They are far more truly our friends than the children 
with whom we have had companionship so many 
years, and upon whom we rely for aid in the dark mo- 
ments of life. The angels are always with us, night 
and da}^, closer than relatives or friends can ever be, 
and better able to render us proper help in sorrow of 
mind and sickness of body. Their love and duty go to- 
gether in our case. If we are so often cast down, and 
so hopeless in our troubles, we have only ourselves 
to blame, for we rarely think of the loving companion 
at our side, often disbelieve in His very existence, 
and never beseech His affectionate aid. If we do not 
ask, how shall we receive ! Every being has its own 
degree of self-respect, and will not thrust itself or its 
services on those who are sceptical or indifferent. 
" Behold I will send my angel, who shall go before 
thee, and keep thee in thy journey, and bring thee 
into the place that I have prepared. Take notice of 



310 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

him, and hear his voice, and do not think him one to 
be contemned : for he will not forgive when thou hast 
sinned, and my name is in him. But if thou wilt 
hear his voice, and do all that I speak, I will be an 
enemy to thy enemies, and will afflict them that afflict 
thee." — Exod. xxiii. 

3. In this world we have need of all the strength 
and consolation which God has provided for us. AVe 
are walking through a land very pleasant to the body 
but very trying to the soul ; yet so blessed with sweet 
springs of comfort for the traveller that he alone suf- 
fers who refuses to pause and refresh himself where 
and when God intended. If we ignore the angels, we 
deprive ourselves of much help and sympathy, and we 
do ignore them. We fail to teach the children con- 
cerning them, we make no acknowledgment of their 
many services, and the colder ones among us relegate 
them to the kingdom of the fairies and goblins. We 
coDclude, as so many do with regard to God, that 
these splendid beings are too high to take notice of 
human littleness ; forgetting that with God, with His 
angels, and with the wise, there is nothing in the uni- 
verse which can be called little. Only the infinite 
power of God could call out of nothing a grain of 
sand, fashion it with so much beauty, and send it 
back to nothingness. And we are the delight of the 
angels. " The angel of the Lord shall encamp round 
about them that fear Him, and shall deliver them,"^ 
Ps. xxxiii. 



tU le<i6t of ^ff ^Atnte. 

After this 1 beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could 
numh&r, of all nations, and peoples, and kindreds, and tongues, 
stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white 
robes and palms in their hands. — Apoc. vii. 9. 

OUTLINE. 

1. This feast specially emphasizes the facts, that God made us, and that 

our destiny is immortal. 

2. For those who have achieved that destiny by entering heaven, we have 

crowns and hymns of praise to-day. 

3. They are not the great saints of history, but the glorified millions of 

the common people. 

4. In life and death they won greater triumphs than such conquerors as 

Alexander and Hannibal. 

5. Their triumphs were threefold, because in the first place they triumphed 

over the flesh and the world. 

6. In the second place they won heaven against the temptations and trials 

of sickness and death. 

7. Their last and most glorious victory was won at the dreadful judgment 

seat of God. 

8. The character of the prize they won when compared with the prizes 

bestowed on its votaries by the world. 



I.— Democracy's Feast. 

1. It ought particularly to be remembered on this 
day that religion is founded on two facts : that God 
made us ; that our destiny is immortal. In recogni- 
tion of the first we build temples to acknowledge 
God's sovereignty, we keep His commandments, He 
has the first place in our hearts. To accomplish the 
second according to His will we frequent the sacra- 
ments and so prepare ourselves for eternal life. Love 
for God and respect for our own immortality are in us 
the springs of true love and respect for our kind ; we 
cannot insult the image of God or treat it with degra- 

311 



312 

dation without insulting and degrading our own na- 
ture. We cannot neglect it in suffering ; we are bound 
to help it onward in every possible way. Hence the 
wonderful charity for all men that was introduced into 
the world by the Christian ; which finds no obstacles 
to its diffusion in color or condition, in opposition, 
ingratitude, or persecution ; which attends to all forms 
of human need, and will save men in spite of them- 
selves ; which crosses the grave, and brings aid to the 
souls in purgatory ; and which on this day rejoices in 
the victory of those who have scaled the heights of 
heaven. 

2. Thus, for those still in the conflict we have aid, 
sympathy, encouragement; for the immortals we have 
crowns, and hymns of praise. They are the dear ones 
of our every-day life, not the great saints whose 
honors are world-wide; the children who once made 
beautiful the ways of earth, but left us before inno- 
cence had departed from them ; the faithful son and 
daughter whose devotion was the prop of age, yet 
were taken from us; the friend that loved us, the 
brother that was part of our life, the wife or the hus- 
band who carried the strongest beat of our hearts into 
the grave with them. The beggar that lay in the 
streets so wretched that none cared to know his 
name, the poor boy that worked his insignificant life 
away on three dollars a week, the old woman of many 
prayers and much feebleness who cumbered the road 
to the church; all these ordinary people, now in 
eternal rest, saints who at least achieved heaven, are 
to-day honored by the universal church. What a 
thrill enlivens the heart at the thought that the hand 
we touched last year, the babe we pressed, the common 



TIJE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS. 313 

ones of the earth are at this moment in everlasting 
glory. 

3. All Saints' Day is the feast of democracy, the 
feast of the common people. We are approaching a 
democratic age in politics, but the Church is always 
the church of the people, no matter how successfully 
for a time the theologians of courts can conceal the 
principle. Her business is with each soul first, and 
afterward with the mass or the class. Master and 
slave are one to her; the children of either mount 
her altars. She never lets go her grip of the common 
people on earth, in purgatory, in heaven. Her mis- 
sionaries seek out the remotest savages; commerce 
seeks out only the paying savages ; kings seize only 
paying territory, and laugh at her record of children 
baptized just before death, even while admiring the 
daring of her priests. These are facts emphasized in 
the feast of this day. 

II.— The City Three Times Won. 

1. The world smiles also at the celebration of this 
hour which is for it only the feast of ashes, of the 
dead, of those whose little influence was wiped out 
either yesterday or ages ago. It asks cynically, 
Where are they? The spiritist replies, in space with 
the same natures as here; the pantheist, they have 
returned to the soul of the universe ; the materialist, 
they are once more the elemental gases to reappear 
in new forms. Alone the Church declares with all 
true believers in Christ that they have won the eternal 
city, the new Jerusalem, and live in conscious, joyful 
activity in the presence of the Trinity and the court 



314 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

of heaven. Conquerors have almost gone mad with 
joy over the conquest of a powerful city, and have 
called upon the nations to rejoice with them; but 
what city can ever compare with the city of God? 
therefore, what rejoicing should surpass his who has 
conquered it and made it eternally his own? The 
conquerors of the world are dust, with their cities and 
their triumphs ; but a whole world, and heaven as 
well, comes forth this day to celebrate a triumph that 
will have no end, whose glory, in the mere material 
order, the circles of unfaith cannot pretend to equal. 
2. Three times these common souls, our brethren, 
stood the ordeal of siege against the holy city . It is 
not a place to be taken by the indifferent and the lazy. 
" The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the 
violent bear it away." They won it first in life by 
their steady fight against the flesh, the devil, and the 
world, by their adhesion to the law, by their devotion 
to duty. Whether rich or poor, they were blessed 
with poverty in spirit, accepting privation as a neces- 
sity, or desiring it as a gift; in spite of youth, or 
health, or high position, or opportunities of power, 
they were meek before all men ; their sins and the 
sins of the world were real grief to them ; they saw 
the injustices of the hour and cried aloud day and 
night for justice ; they were merciful from the deep 
need they felt of mercy for themselves ; they were clean 
of heart from a great love of God, and peaceful from 
their submission to His will ; and they bore the per- 
secution of this thoughtless world in silence, the per- 
secution of ridicule and misunderstanding. It was 
not an easy struggle even for the weakest. The flesh 
is always with us, the devil near, and the world is 



THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS. 315 

forever telling how easy it is to sin, how long is life 
and how far away death and judgment, and how many 
sin for the experience and live decent lives later. 
Against force and cunning, against open foe and 
stupid friend they prevailed. 

3. A second time they won in sickness and death, 
which are the tests of good living. The infidel dies 
easy as an animal usually does, freed from mental 
suffering, stupefied with drugs; the Christian goes 
like a knight to his last struggle ; the habits of years 
stand to him in the anguish of sickness, the delay of 
death ; as he was meek, merciful, contrite, just, peace- 
ful, and clean of heart, now his vision sees God more 
clearly than ever, and with fear completely drowned 
in exultation he marches forth to his last combat. 
His last great struggle may be against his own hopes, 
that the glorious vision of the new Jerusalem may 
have been only a dream, and that all must end in 
eternal death. Whatever form the battle takes he is 
an easy \ictor, and goes to his third and final siege 
with confidence. It is the judgment, whose terrors 
are only for those who have denied God, while they 
believed in him, who denied Satan yet never lost their 
dread of one day serving him, who denied sin all their 
lives as an invention of priestcraft, yet trembled at the 
power it had over their souls. The Christian here 
meets his last victory and receives his crown after the 
searching ordeal. The Friend Who judges him was 
his Captain in the struggle of life, and now confers on 
him the crown ; the Satan he fought so bravely for 
himself and others receives his last defeat from him 
in the great Captain's presence; the sins which might 
have been his ruin are buried in the sea of his tears 



316 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

and his penances. His judgment is his greatest 
victory, for it is the approbation of God Himself for 
the good fight of time. 

in. — The New Jerusalem. 

1. These dear friends of ours have achieved more 
in winning heaven than the conquerors of earth in all 
time; yet they are only the common miUions of 
history, the mere dross of humanity as compared 
with those who achieved distinction by painting a 
canvas, chipping marble, or writing verse, statutes, 
orations. They have won all that which life is not 
and has not: youth, activity, perfection, which are 
eternal, without change, and enjoyed in the presence 
of God, amid the social life of the human race regen- 
erated. " One day in thy courts is above a thousand" 
anywhere else, wept the psalmist, as he thought of 
heaven. When one stops for a moment in the rush of 
business to ask why all this commotion and worry, to 
what does it lead, what is its result ; and seeing the 
handful of dust to which a man and his money are 
one day to be surely reduced, looks toward that 
heaven which the poorest can claim and labor for and 
win, — his first feeling ought to be pity for the temper 
which can turn men from the pursuit of things eternal 
to the pursuit of things of dust. The saints would 
not at this moment exchange their lot for Homer's 
place, or Peter's, or even Mary's, as these were on 
earth and as their memories are with men. Oh, well 
did Christ say, " Seek first the kingdom of God and 
His justice and all these [minor] things shall be added 
unto you." These millions of the sanctified sought 



THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS. 317 

and obtained that justice, and here to-da.y the great 
church pours at their feet the world's noblest treas- 
ures ; hymn and music, painting and sculpture and 
temples, the love, memory, homage, tears, petitions 
of the living millions, who hope to win in a humble 
way the New Jerusalem. What sage or prince of 
earth ever received such honors? All these things 
have been added unto them. 

2. Hail, then, to the day which reminds us of all 
this glory, and of our claim to and future possession 
of the same ! Hail to the great church which estab- 
lished this anniversary in its keen and inexhaustible 
love of immortal man ! Hail to the great souls that 
won the crown by a gallant fight, though they were 
the little ones of the earth, and their names no longer 
honor a human memory or a graven stone ! Hail to 
the dear ones of our town, and parish, and household, 
whom we prized indeed living, but never saw in their 
glory because of our sins and unfaith ! Hail to that 
heaven, where the best of earth has been since Christ 
ascended, and where alone the human heart finds 
everlasting life and rest! [Praise to the God that 
made these things possible, and that out of all the 
discord of this world will yet bring eternal harmony ! 



Out of the depths 1 have cried to Thee, Lord : Lord, Mar my 

voice. — Ps. cxxix. 
It is, therefore, a holy and wholesome tJiought to jpi^ay for the dead, 

that they may he loosed from their sins. — i Mac. xii. 46. 

OUTLINE. 

1. Catholics believe in Purgatory, because the Church teaches it, 

2. And because the Scriptures and the Fathers support the belief, 

3. Which has also a strong support in the natural impulse to believe in a 

middle state. 

4. The sorrow of the souls in purgatory. 

5. They depend on us for aid, which we are bound to give. 

6. The Church has provided the means to help them. 

7. Hence, the widespread devotion to this great charity. 

8. Its beautiful effects on our lives. 

9. And the proper punishment of those who forget the dead. 



I. — The Pkison. 

1. The outside world has made much fun of the 
Catholic belief in a middle state, and is reaping the 
harvest of its ridicule by its growing conviction that 
there is no state of any sort after the earthly one is 
ended. When we are asked why we believe in Pur- 
gatory we have the one answer, which applies to our 
belief in any doctrine : because the Church teaches it. 
There may be other reasons, but this is the highest 
and safest, and other authorities, but none infallible. 
With non-Catholics the Church is not a high author- 
ity. They accept nothing from the past but what 
they have themselves discovered. For us the Church 
on her human side is the sum of the best and highest 

318 



THE SOULS IN PURGATORY. 319 

human effort in all ages, and on her spiritual side she 
is the infallible mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost. The 
error-mongers have travelled with her for twenty cen- 
turies, denouncing one doctrine after another; and 
she has seen them perish with their errors, while her 
glorious truths shine out brighter with each genera- 
tion. If the principles and precedents, axioms and 
statutes, shaped and recorded by the jurists of the 
world since the beginning, meet with such respect and 
so bind the reason and will of men, it is only fair 
that the defined teachings of the great Church should 
have weight with all mankind. " The house of God, 
which is the church of the living God, the pillar and 
ground of the truth." — 1 Tim. iii. 

2. The Holy Scriptures, however, support her 
teaching about a middle state, and the Fathers of 
earlier days wrote openly of their belief in it. It was 
known of heaven, for example, that " there shall not 
enter into it anything defiled." — Apoc. xxi. Our 
Lord Himself once declared that " he that shall speak 
against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, 
neither in this world, nor in the world to come." — 
Matt. xii. The force of these utterances can be seen 
from a little reasoning. As to the latter there is an 
implication that some sins are to be forgiven after 
death, to which the sin against the Holy Ghost is an 
exception. As to the former, experience has taught 
us that few men die in a state of perfection with all 
their debts to justice paid. We may take the case of 
a sinner, whose life was utterly without grace until 
the last moment; an indifferent life, harmless as to 
human law, but neglectful of the divine law. Sick- 
ness brings to him the grace of understanding of his 



320 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

sins and omissions, and after a few months of illness 
patiently borne, he passes to his judgment. It is cer- 
tainly within God's power, which He often exercises 
for such men as the penitent thief, to wipe out all this 
man's obligations on the instant; but, neither in the 
order of nature, nor in the order of grace, does He 
work great miracles without sufficient cause. He al- 
lows His laws to work out their consequences, and 
their violators must pay all penalties. His aid is 
confined to giving them the gifts of repentance and 
patience, and the desire to expiate. Were the sinner 
mentioned to live another lifetime he could not ex- 
piate the consequences of his miserable life. It is 
only fair to conclude that he is given time for ex- 
piation in the place of purgation, in Purgatory. 
"Amen I say to thee, thou shalt not go out from 
thence till thou pay the last farthing." — Matt. v. 

3. This is the reasoning of the Fathers on the texts 
of Scripture. Hence, Catholics feel that the doctrine 
of the Church has solid support from the holy writ- 
ings, from Christ, and from His great servants in the 
past. Human reason and human feeling also lend 
their aid to the doctrine of Purgatory. There is a 
natural impulse to pray for the dead, so strong in us 
that almost all nations have done it without any 
special revelation. The pagans of Greek and Eoman 
days offered sacrifices for the dead, that their shades 
might be at peace ; the Jews to this day have cere- 
monies in behalf of the dead ; and Protestant Chris- 
tians, in their memorial services for their departed, 
have to put a strong rein on the natural impulse to 
cry out with the Catholic : May their souls be at rest 
with Christ. As a matter of fact, many of them rise 



THE SOULS IN PURGATORY. 321 

above their own formal beliefs, aucl deliberately pray 
for their beloved. What a tribute to the doctrine of 
Purgatory ! Thus supported by the impulse of nature 
in believers, by the practice of the past, and by the 
teaching of the great Church, the average Catholic re- 
gards with calmness the assault upon his belief in a 
middle state. " The Spirit of Truth will teach you 
all truth." — John xvi. 

II.— The Prisoners. 

1. On account of our many imperfections, of our 
forgotten sins, and of our debts to justice, most of us 
will spend some time in the prison of purgation. " I 
say unto you, that every idle word that men shall 
speak, they shall render an account for it in the day 
of judgment." — Matt. xii. With so searching an ac- 
count to render, it will be difficult even for the great 
saints to escape detention in the house of sorrow. 
We have therefore a personal interest in purgatory, 
deeper than in the spot w^here our bodies shall rest 
until the last day; and yet, so contrary is human 
nature, even when Christianized, that many spend 
more time in selecting and decorating the burial- 
place than in contemplating the prison of souls. 
Pause for a moment beside the body of this friend 
who has been dead but a day. He may have had 
many strange experiences in life, but none to equal 
those of the last twenty-four hours. In that brief 
time he has met death, translation from time to 
eternity, and judgment ; he has stood face to face with 
the angels, the demons, and the Judge ; and he has 
entered into the house of probation under the escort 
21 



322 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

of the Archangel Michael. Greater even than all 
these, he has shrunk before his first glance of sin, and 
fallen before the sight of his own sins ; and into him 
has surged a fierce desire for justice against himself, 
a longing for complete expiation for the wrongs he has 
done to God and man. It would be impossible to de- 
scribe in a volume the vast experiences which have 
come to him in so brief a time ; yet how coldly we 
look on his quiet body dressed for the grave, how 
calmly we utter the formal prayer for his rest before 
turning again to the joy of our own lives. 

2. The good work which this soul has now to per- 
form in Purgatory is that of paying the last farthing 
of his debt to divine justice. It is this debt which 
causes his suffering, for it delays his entrance into 
heaven, and weighs him down with the sense of shame 
and horror for his own life. Long would be his stay 
in the prison but for the permission given to all the 
children of God to go to his aid. He has the right 
of appeal to the angels and saints in heaven, and to 
the brethren on earth. Charity is the distinguishing 
mark of the true Christian. " By this shall all men 
know that you are my disciples, if you have love one 
for another."— John xiii. And every form of human 
distress is open to our loving ministrations. It is 
within our power to diminish the burden which the 
soul in prison is compelled to carry, and we are as 
much bound to do it as to perform any other work of 
charity. We shall know this power of charity much 
better in Purgatory than at present, and we shall seek 
it earnestly as do our dead brethren, crying out, 
"Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you, my 
friends." Who will remember us after death, if not 



THE SOULS IN PURGATORY. 323 

those whom we loved and served? " Bear ye one an- 
other's burdens; and so you shall fulfil the law of 
Christ." — Gal. vi. The Church has placed in our 
hands many means of assisting the souls in Purgatory 
to pay off the debts of their earthly career. We can 
have offered the sacrifice of the Mass, give alms to 
the poor, pledge our good works of every kind for 
their relief, and ask directly with earnest hearts for 
their speedy release from their prison. There is no 
excuse for any indifference to this beautiful work of 
charity. "Eestrain not grace from the dead."— 
Ecclus. vii. 

III.— The Eewakd. 

1. It is easy for all to see the deep hold which be- 
lief in Purgatory has on the Catholic mind. The de- 
votion to the work of succoring the dead is second to 
none in the Church. This month of November is 
specially dedicated to the remembrance of the dead, 
the indulgences which the living can earn for the holy 
souls are simply beyond counting, it is even permitted 
to us to offer for them every indulgence that may be- 
come our own after death, and societies have been 
established in every corner of the earth for their 
benefit. There is in existence a religious community 
which has no other aim than to pay their debts to 
justice. The great charities founded by the faithful 
in behalf of the needy and suffering among the liv- 
ing are not more beautiful and powerful than the 
secret work of helping the holy souls, though great 
buildings and heavy revenues are not required for 
this charity. We are not content with professing our 
belief in a middle state with the lips : but we hasten 



324 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

to express iu acts of faith and hoi^e and charity, the 
belief that burns within us. 

2. We do not wait for our reward until the long 
day of eternity. A part of it is paid to us in this 
world. The grief-stricken forget half their sorrows 
in the delightful labor of still serving those who have 
passed away. Every prayer that falls from the lov- 
ing lips, every penny placed in the hands of the 
needy, every pain relieved in the name of Christ, like 
the dew at night, falls on the mourning prisoner of 
Purgatory, increases his hope, diminishes his pain, 
and thrills him with delight over the faithful love 
which has not forgotten him on earth. Ah, long will 
the monthly mass, the unforgotten anniversary, keep 
his memory green in the hearts of the living ! And 
as they kneel before the Christ of the altar the chasm 
between them will disappear, because they and their 
dead look together on the same Christ. In the 
Catholic life there is no sorrow of despair over the 
departed, because the dead are too near. The hands 
which soothed the anguish of their dying reach out as 
easily across the tomb, and minister to them in their 
prison. Their union is not broken by death, but 
rather strengthened; and while nature gives way to 
its sorrow the golden sun of hope never goes down on 
that holy grief. In time the tears will cease to fall, 
and the dead will be remembered with resignation. 
They are safe at home with the Father, they have 
paid their last debt to justice, and nov/ their love fol- 
lows us who have yet to endure the ways of death and 
of Purgatory. We can speak of them as of those who 
have gone a little journey, recall their loving ways, 
and smile at their humors ; and always there is pres- 



THE SOULS IN PURGATORY. 325 

ent to us that final meeting with them in the gates of 
heaven. Long before that time their hands will be 
stretched out to us in prison, and all that our love 
measured out to them in Purgatorj^ will be paid back 
an hundredfold. Thus is our faith, our hope, our 
charity increased and made firm and fruitful by the 
simple doctrine so often derided by the foolish 
worldly-wise. 

3. It seems strange that any Catholic could ever 
forget the prison and the prisoners ; but when they 
can forget Christ Himself the other ingratitude is 
easy. It is stranger yet that Catholics, who mourn 
their dead with bitter grief through long years, can 
forget the very existence of Purgatory. Such grief 
has more selfishness than love in it. Flowers, 
marbles, tears, comfort, are wasted on the poor body 
and its last resting-place ; but never a Mass is offered, 
or a poor beggar helped, or a penitential act done, 
for the relief of the living soul. At most a few 
wretched prayers, too weak to rise above the horizon, 
acknowledge a dead faith in the prison of the debtors. 
It is the punishment of these indifferents that most of 
their relatives and friends are of the same stripe, and 
that they also shall be left, as they left their dead, 
to pay their debts unaided. " The hope of the un- 
thankful shall melt away as the winter's ice, and shall 
run off as unprofitable water." — Wis. xvi. 



t^t ^(XintB. 



To him that shall overcome I will give to sit with Me in my throne: 
as I also have overcome, and am sat down with my Father in his 
throne. — Apoc. Hi. 21. 

TJisy are eqvxil to the angels, and are the children of Ood, being 
the children of the resurrection.— Luke xx. 86. 

OUTLINE. 

1. Very few have a clear understanding of the nature of a saint. 

2. Who is always a more or less faithful copy of Christ. 

3. And who ever remains a human being in spite of his biographers. 

4. The saints knew and despised themselves with perfect knowledge. 

5. They knew men to perfection and loved them with godlike fervor. 

6. Beside the saints the pagan philanthropists look little and ordinary. 

7. The natural powers and acquirements of the saints might be small, but 

their knowledge of God was angelic. 

8. The Protestant and pagan world begins at this late hour to admire them. 

9. Their tremendous influence on the world's history. 



I. The Tkue Idea of a Saint. 

1. The life-stories of the martyrs appeal to all 
minds, because they are tragedies, and tragedies are 
always interesting. But it must be said that in the 
eyes of Heaven the martyrs' deaths were less notable 
and meritorious than the last acts of perfect love 
which stirred their strong hearts. Death is an ordi- 
nary fact, which occurs to all men. Perfect love, 
which makes death acceptable to the martyrs, is 
rarer than diamonds ; but it is the distinguishing mark 
of all the saints, whether they die at the block, be- 
fore a pitiful w^orld, or in a monk's obscure cell. A 
great mind like St. Thomas of Aquin, a humble 

326 



THE SAINTS. ^27 

farmer like St. Isidore, a commonplace beggar like 
St. Benedict Labre, are all alike in the one quality of 
loving God with all the strength of nature and grace ; 
but where ten thousand have heard of the martyrs, 
only one has heard of the great saints whose lives 
ended with an ordinary fever. In fact, the English- 
speaking world either knows nothing of the saints, 
or misunderstands them. The very idea of a saint is 
wholly lost to the non-Catholic mind. Kate Field 
once wrote that Catholics made saints of persons who 
on principle never took a bath, nor changed their 
clothes ; and Tennyson, in his poem on St. Simeon of 
the Pillar, makes the man of God a feeble-minded 
clown. Catholics resident in Protestant countries 
have misunderstood, and partly forgotten, their 
saints for two reasons ; they would not expose them to 
Protestant ridicule by frequent mention of them, and 
left the writing of their lives to pious persons who 
forgot the saints were human beings, and made them 
out altogether angelic. Popular Catholic art has 
rooted the angelic idea in our minds, as one can see 
by a hasty examination of our popular engraving and 
statuary. So that, between Protestant prejudice and 
Catholic blundering, we have all been deprived of a 
rational acquaintance with the saint. 

2. A saint, as Catholics understand him, is a more 
or less exact copy of Jesus Christ Himself, as far as 
man can imitate that divine Model. The life of every 
true Christian is modelled on the life of Christ. When 
you meet with a spotless soul, laboring in sweetness, 
meekness, and patience, to know and love and serve 
God more completely and unselfishly every day, 
whose meat and drink is to do the will of Heaven, 



328 THE chaplain's sermons. 

you have met a saint. He may be a common saint, 
without any call to enlighten the Church, to illumine 
its history, honor its altars, console its children in all 
ages; his vocation may only be to let a small and 
humble circle feel and see what the perfect love of 
God is; his lot may be obscurity; nevertheless he is 
a saint, and of his kind there are thousands in the 
Church at this moment. From these common saints 
God selects the historic souls who are to stir the world 
with their genius, as did St. Thomas ; convert nations, 
like St. Francis Xavier; make wonderful history like 
Pope Hildebrand, and draw the tears of Christian 
and unbeliever alike by such a tragedy as St. Agnes'. 
Between the historic saint and the common saint there 
is not the slightest difference, except in the gifts that 
God gives them, and the duties He requires of them. 
All love and serve God to the fullest measure de- 
manded by the nature and the grace with which He 
has endowed them. They never lose one iota of their 
human nature. "Lord," the aged Philip Neri used 
to say each day of his old age, " watch Philip, that 
the traitor in him do not shame Thee before night." 
3. The marble in the sculptor's hands becomes a 
statue, not by destroying the marble, but by chiselling 
off every bit unnecessary to the ideal; so the man 
comes to be the saint, not by destroying his nature, 
but by chiselling away its superfluities and giving it 
the outline of Christ. And the work is not done by 
angelic hands, or by the trick of the magician, in the 
twinkling of an eye ; it is done by a poor creature of 
dust like ourselves, urged by the grace of Baptism 
and the other sacraments to follow Christ, who fixes 
his eyes on the person of the Saviour, and, with the 



THE SAINTS. 329 

sharp chisel and the firm hammer, chips and beats 
the sanctified block, stroke after stroke, year after 
year, as Michael Angelo worked, in study, in prayer, 
in patience, in joy, until to the eyes of men and 
angels the statue stands forth in luminous perfection, 
another Christ. And whether you find the statue in 
the palace of a king, admired by the great, or hidden 
in a barn known only to the little, it is still a work of 
genius. Keeping in mind the fact that saints are 
human beings, of the same stuff as ourselves, and 
that they arrive at perfection or saintship just as we 
would set out for that goal, it will be easy to under- 
stand the secret forces of a saint's character. The 
saints are copies of Christ. Their gifts are from 
Him, and resemble His. His gifts were knowledge 
and love— overpowering knowledge, and immense 
love ; the saints consequently possess, above all other 
men, an almost perfect knowledge, an almost perfect 
love of the three beings with whom every man must 
deal in this world : themselves, their neighbors, and 
the incomprehensible God. Knowledge is power ; love 
is power ; knowledge and love together are nearly in- 
vincible ; perfect knowledge and perfect love of God 
and man are grauted only to the saints, are the high- 
est forms of power, and account for the influence, the 
immortality of fame and glory awarded to the saints 
even in this world. 

II. The Saint's Knowledge and Love. 

1. To know and love one's self may seem easy, 
agreeable acquirements ; but in a world whose mean- 
est animals and smallest insects are mysteries to the 



330 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 

wisest, we can be excused from perfect acquaintance 
with our own nature; in a world where vice is so 
common and sin so powerful, the best of us can sus- 
pect that we love our sins better than we do ourselves. 
We all know that the wages of sin is death, yet we all 
sin ; we all know that the habit of sin is disastrous to 
health of bodj', as well as health of soul, yet we are 
not frightened from acquiring such a habit. Our 
knowledge of ourselves is a weak and flimsy knowl- 
edge ; our love of ourselves is a false love of falser 
pleasures. The sea is pretty deep and wide, and the 
heavens are high, but they have been sounded and 
measured; the height and depth of each human soul 
has never been measured by man; out of those 
depths have risen monsters that have scourged whole 
nations. Who would have believed that this nature 
of ours, so beautiful in itself, so richly endowed and 
honored by God, could give birth to Judas, to Nero, 
to Henry VIII., to the First Napoleon? Yet these 
and other monsters like them, more or less famous, 
vv'ere once innocent children, and no one, not even 
themselves, dreamed of the power of evil locked up 
in their helpless selves. To know one's self, then, is 
not so easy as it seems. To love one's self with a 
wise, judicious love, is difficult. When we get to 
know our good qualities we almost fall down to wor- 
ship them. Satan, amazed at his own beauty and 
power, thought his good qualities good enough to 
make him God. If his knowledge of himself was so 
poor and deficient, if his love for himself was so 
foolish, he, an angel of light, what must we think of 
our self-knowledge and self-love. Now in these two 
things the saints of God have been proficient. Look- 



THE SAINTS. 331 

ing with the light of Heaven into their own natures, 
they saw in terror the shapes of new and more 
terrible Neros in those profound depths; and from 
that knowledge came a tremendous distrust of them- 
selves. They became humble to an extent men could 
not understand; their humility brought on them the 
anger of friends and the scorn of their enemies ; no 
place was too small for them, though a tramp might 
disdain it, and they fled honors as we fly a plague. 
When they were called to wear the honors of govern- 
ment in the hierarchy or in religious communities, 
they wept tears more sorrowful than death of their 
own could draw from them ; they knelt at the feet of 
superiors and begged, as they never would have 
begged for life, to be left in obscurity. We, in our 
calm and confident knowledge of human nature, are 
almost inclined to take such tears and pleadings as 
hypocritical. W'e, in our superior knowledge of our 
own ordinary qualities, feel ourselves capable of any 
position in the gift of God or man ; we would accept 
with joy all dignities ; and where w^e do not scorn the 
tears of the frightened saint, we declare our inability 
to understand him. We love ourselves for the com- 
fort and pleasure we get out of ourselves. AVe run 
after the first seats at banquets and spectacles; we 
shirk labor; we avoid sorrow and pain and weari- 
ness ; we groan and cry to Heaven if our will and our 
ease are put to discomfort. 

2. The saints loved themselves but for two rea- 
sons — that God had made them and given them a 
work to do. They treated their souls and bodies as 
dear friends, as servants of the will of God. They 
studied, rested, ate, drank, to keep the instrument of 



332 THE chaplain's sermons. 

God's designs in condition for the work He assigned 
them. They were not deformed or decrepit in body, 
or crabbed in soul, as Tennyson would have us 
believe, but beautiful in appearance, so that all men 
ran to them, sought to hear them, to touch them, to 
study their manners, to watch the eyes and the fea- 
tures through which shone " the light that never was 
on land and sea," the light of Heaven. No mere 
earthly or mental beautj' ever received such homage, 
conscious or unconscious, as the saints received from 
men. To know and love our own kind seems natural 
and easy ; and up to a certain point it really cannot 
be difficult. It is rarely, however, that we get the 
opportunity to know men as we know ourselves, and 
our love for them is so mingled with selfishness, so 
hindered by our own weakness, that with the gener- 
ality of men, outside of Christian influence, it is 
almost animal-like. Speaking generally, when we 
come to acquire a fair knowledge of human nature, 
we are said to be keen and experienced, which mostly 
means that hardness of heart is easy to us. When we 
have acquired a love of men beyond the common, we 
are called philanthropists — lovers of men. Business 
men are, as a rule, best equipped with knowledge of 
their fellow-creatures. This knowledge has almost 
invariably one result; the sense of mankind has ex- 
pressed it in a proverb: "Familiarity breeds con- 
tempt." Business men despise and distrust the 
many, and respect the few. Lovers of men, philan- 
thropists, are few at present, and have been fewer, 
and their good works, noble as they undoubtedly are, 
worthy of all praise, are very accidental. Knowledge 
which leads us to despise our kind is not of the lofti- 



THE SAINTS. 333 

est, and charity of an accidental sort is not encour- 
aging nor lasting. Even Catholics who know all 
men to be their brethren in Christ, and feel called 
upon to love them as brethren, know with what diffi- 
culty they bring themselves to understand another's 
nature, and to speak with necessary politeness to an 
enemy. Beside this halting knowledge and this cold 
love place the knowledge and love of the saint in 
regard to all men. Their knowledge of a man is as 
wide as heaven; they see at one glance the depths of 
his nature, his origin from the hand of God, his 
return to that God, his high and constant position in 
God's love, his redemption by Christ, his risk of 
eternal happiness ; they see him the parent of innum- 
erable offspring; with all his faults, the founder of 
empires, though to-day he may be the commonest of 
laborers; and the result of their knowledge of him, 
Heaven-born and Heaven-sent knowledge, is a senti- 
ment of the prof oundest respect ; they know nothing 
of scorn and distrust concerning him; and though 
they fear themselves, distrust and humiliate them- 
selves, for man they have only sentiments of love and 
esteem. 

3. Where we respect and confide, it is easy to love, 
but the love of the saints for their fellows, like their 
humility, is something mysterious to us all. It has 
led them to do such wonders that the world calls 
them crazy enthusiasts; and while we are proud of 
them, we are also mortified that we cannot explain 
their enthusiasm in measured language. The en- 
vious infidel of our day, when you speak of the love 
of the saints for men, asks proudly if they have done 
anything for man which other men, not saints, have 



334 THE chaplain's sermons. 

not done for love of man, or gold, or mere adventure-; 
if you speak of the time and money and labor given 
by the saints in carrying out their ideas, the infidel 
will show you scores of living men doing as much 
from different motives, exploring the hidden regions 
of the earth, or solving scientific problems for the 
general benefit ; if you name St. Francis Xavier and 
Father Jogues, and other brave souls that lived and 
died or shed their blood among strange and barbarous 
peoples for man's sake, they will name you Cook, 
Speke, Livingston, Stanley, and a thousand others 
who dared as much for gold, or fame; if you speak of 
St. Francis, St. Benedict, St. Vincent de Paul, and 
others w^ho founded great congregations of charity, 
they will point out to you the innumerable benefit as- 
sociations of to-day, founded to make money. One 
would imagine that the love of Christ, as one great 
New York journal tried to prove, was hardly equal 
in beneficent results to the love of gold in man. 
But a stream never rises higher than its source. 
Bunch explorers for love of fame and money, philan- 
thropists, scientists, and organizers of mutual bene- 
fit associations, into one, and you have nothing that 
is not material; you have not added to the stock of 
true uplifting love for man one fraction of an ounce. 
Their benefits to humanity, like the motives which 
prompted them, are cold and hard, and all their power 
could not purchase for man one jot of that deep, over^ 
powering love which prompts every charity of the 
saint, and makes him no longer a man, but a God. 
He is no mere dispenser of money, no mere builder 
of hospitals and refuges, but love itself incarnate in 
man, come to give that which only God can give in 



THE SAINTS. 335 

full measure, the loving sympathy of a Christian 
heart. And so the savage or the half-tamed bar- 
barian sees step upon his soil, no crowned explorer, 
but a brother and a friend; the orphan, in the cold 
imitations of home called refuges, meets the tender- 
ness, the sweetness of a mother's love; the dying man 
in the hosintal, the insane patient, the wild criminal, 
are encompassed by a love of which friends and fel- 
lows are alike incapable ; and the poor leper, shut out 
from man and love, more carefully than if the earth 
swallowed him, feels upon his horrible face the sv/eet, 
clean, healthy lips of a Damian, and around his dread- 
ful body the clasp of human arms — a clasp he never 
thought to feel again. 

III. The Saint's Influence. 

1. To know God and love Him are the first prin- 
ciples of Christian faith and practice, but we do not 
need to be told with how little knowledge and how 
feeble a love of the Creator men can get along ; our 
own personal experience and our own observation 
have taught us the measure. We know God, yet we 
do not scruple to offend Him ; we say we love Him, 
and our lives scarcely hint of it. Knowledge of the 
good makes a man noble of thought and action ; love 
of another makes us resemble the loved one ; and just 
what we know of God, and just how much we love 
Him can be made plain to ourselves by our own dis- 
positions. The saints could be deficient in earthly 
learning, but for their knowledge of God Heaven 
could justly confer upon them its proudest degree; 
and their love of Jesus m^de them what He was, 



336 THE chaplain's sermons. 

natural and charming in manner, beautiful to the 
dullest eye, wise in their simplest utterances, inno- 
cent as children, severe in judgment of sin, merciful, 
loving in judgment of man, laborious to the utter- 
most, with faith like a rock, hope unshakeable, and a 
devotion scarcely surpassed by angels. 

Such are the saints as the Church knows them, and 
as God honors them. If any men are worthy of 
human honor for high scientific attainment and love 
for their fellows, the saints stand first, whether they 
be famous or obscure by the world's measure; for 
they are experts in those forms of knowledge which 
are highest — knowledge of God and man ; and their 
love for man is not onlj^ human, it is also divine in 
its intensity and fruitfulness. 

2. Their lives read like romances ; their deaths thrill 
the most sceptical. Yet Catholic literatures of the 
English-speaking world have done little to bring these 
wondrous and beautiful lives before the English- 
speaking peoples. The truth is, we feel ashamed to 
have our saints working miracles in times which deny 
to all men the right or the power to work miracles. 
We seem afraid to maintain before this sneering world 
that miracles are the unfailing consequence of such 
knowledge and love of God as the saints possessed. 
Yet the world is doing what we are afraid to do. It 
is reviewing and restoring the work of St. Thomas 
Aquinas, and tearing to pieces the work of Martin 
Luther. In our very time it awards to Thomas 
More, Lord Chancellor of England and martyr of the 
Church, that praise which he scorned, and condemns 
unsparingly John Knox, bigot and firebrand. It has 
only pity and kind words for Cardinal Fisher, and 



THE SAINTS. 337 

the mercy of silent contempt for Cranmer. A thor- 
ough Protestant writes the life of St. Francis of 
Assisi in a spirit that a Catholic might envy, and a 
hundred others write to condemn the spirit, the doc- 
trines, and the works of Calvin. Protestants would 
have no historic saints on their calendars, denied that 
such beings could exist, condemned as fictions, or 
worse, the saints of the Church ; and to-daj^ the}^ are 
without a practical standard of personal sanctity, and 
their historic personages, Luther, Calvin, Knox, 
Henry, Elizabeth, Cranmer, look like historic rogues. 
These writers feel, in a measure, as we do not, the 
beauty and force of a holiness which exists nowhere 
but in the saints, of whom the historic fraction are 
the public men and women of the Church, and as such 
entitled to a foremost place in biographical work. 

3. They have inspired art, and they are still the 
models for great souls striving for sanctity. Many a 
noble canvas pictures their faces and the scenes of 
their lives ; mam^ a statue, sculpture, mosaic, fresco, 
tapestry, is concerned with them alone; many a 
stately poem and classic volume gets half its sweet- 
ness and power from their names ; grand churches and 
cathedrals rise under their patronage ; millions of holy 
souls look to them for help and inspiration. The 
memories of them, like a million streams, flow over 
the fair land of the Church, keeping its flowers in 
bloom, its air cool and sweet, and its people fresh and 
vigorous. What a pity that the English-speaking 
world is still shut out from their influence. We know 
so little of them that we hardly dare write their his- 
tories in the English tongue. That tongue for three 
hundred years was the slave, chained and calloused, 
22 



338 THE chaplain's sermons. 

of English error ; a slave taught to revile everything 
Catholic, to forget that it had ever sung hymns to the 
Mother of God and the saints of Christendom, until 
Cardinal Newman struck the chains from its limbs, de- 
livered it from bondage, and showed it once more to 
praise God and His chosen ones in tones more sublime 
than ever. All praise to him ! We have only to fol- 
low where he has led. Locked up in other languages 
lie the stories and traditions of our best friends in 
heaven; some day they will be translated for our joy. 
May the pens that engage in that noble work be in- 
spired to impress upon our minds and hearts what 
the saints were in truth — not stones, but men; not 
angels, but human beings ; not an unfeeling mob pre- 
destined to glory, but sensitive souls, who sweat blood 
with Christ; and who first and last, on earth and in 
heaven, have thought, worked, and prayed for us as 
if we were their children. 



3nbe;r. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



Advent Season, The, 1 

All Saints, 311 

Angels, The, 303 

Ascension of the King, The, 

262 
Assumption, The, 294 
Blessed Trinity, The, 278 
Child, The, 246 
Christian Family, The, 197 
Christmas Day, 44 
Corpus Christi, 286 
Death, 95 

Easter Sunday, 254 
Epiphany, The, 61 
Everlasting Failure, 121 
Faith, 137 

Final Account, The, 104 
Four Last Things, The, 222 
Heaven, 112 

Holy Name of Jesus, The, 230 
Holy Thursday, 181 
Immaculate Conception, The, 



Knowledge and Love of Christ, 

The, 146 
Lenten Season, The. 86 
Married State, The, 238 
New Year's Day, 53 
Passion of Christ. The, 129 
Penance, 173 
Pentecost, 270 
Prayer, 205 
Precursor, The, 9 
Priestcraft, 213 
Responsibilities of Christians, 

27 
Sacraments, The, 155 
Saints, The. 326 
Scribes and the Pharisees, The, 

18 
Sin, 164 

Souls in Purgatory, The, 318 
St. Joseph, 77 
St. Patrick, 69 
What is Wrong with the Men, 

189 



INDEX FOR SUNDAY GOSPELS. 



First of Advent, 1, 104 
Second of Advent, 9, 146 
Third of Advent, 9, 18 
Fourth of Advent, 9, 27 
First after Epiphany, 97 



Second after Epiphany, 230, 238 
Third after Epiphany, 137 
Fourth after Epiphany, 205 
Fifth after Epiphany, 104, 164 
Septuagesima, 173 



339 



340 



INDEX. 



jsima, 27 
Quinquagesima, 86 
Second of Lent, 27, 146 
Third of Lent, 164 
Fourth of Lent, 189 
Fifth of Lent, 18 



First after Easter 137 
Second after Easter, 213 
Third after Easter, 77, 112 
Fifth after Easter, 205 
Second after Pentecost, 189 
Third after Pentecost, 173 



These sermons were not written with reference to the special 
gospels, but by a few changes in the text they can be made suit- 
able for the Sunday gospels named above, and for many others 
accoring to the taste and inclination of the preacher. 



INDEX FOR 

In Advent, 

In Lent, first course, 

In Lent, second course, 

In Lent, third course, . 

In June, 

In October, . 

On Christ, first course, 

On Christ, second course. 

On Holy Fear, 

On Sin, 

On the Family, 

On the Life Eternal, 



SPECIAL COURSES. 

. 1, 9, 18, 27 

86, 95, 104, 112, 121,129 

137, 146, 155, 164, 173, 181 

189, 197, 205, 213, 222, 230 

. 44, 181, 129, 262 

.36, 286, 294, 303 

. 44, 181, 129, 254. 262 

. 146, 278, 230, 286 

95, 104, 112, 121, 129, 222 

. 95, 104, 112, 173, 164 

. 189, 197, 238. 246 

. 112, 302, 310, 318 



In this list only the Lenten courses were actually preached as 
a series. The other courses have a natural connection which 
will make the work of adapting them to the needs of a series 
very simple and easy. 



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